As Ummi
by vifetoile89
Summary: Asami can remember pieces of a previous lifetime - one where she was Ummi, the doomed bride of Avatar Kuruk. It wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't complicate her relationship with Korra...
1. In which there is a tree

In the deepest canyon of the Spirit World, a tree grew out of a nameless swamp. Within this tree lived Koh, called the Face-Stealer. He was very old, and he knew it. He did not feel time, but he enjoyed it, because with time his collection grew.

He had collected many faces over the years, and tended to them with care.

There was one face that he always kept a little apart from the others, a special prize. A young woman's face, with brown eyes and long brown hair, and a radiant beauty. Koh kept her distinct, ready to be revealed at a moment's notice for some dramatic effect. He would move this face, puppet-like, and then return her to the darkness.

Koh had held this face for about five hundred years, although he liked to exaggerate the number. And the face did not argue. She did not have the will to fight, nor did she remember her own age, anymore.

There was a shred of spirit attached to that face, a little willpower and many wishes. She used to wish for a rescue, for a powerful hero to charge in and set her free. Then, these wishes faded, and she wondered what life was like beyond the walls of the tree. Then even these longings faded, and the knowledge that there was a world beyond this darkness grew dim. The one thing to remain unspoiled was her beauty, kept safe from sunlight and time.

In the cavernous depths of the tree, she and all those trapped within Koh remained static, surrounded by shadow, by dripping water, and low laughter.

One day, Koh pulled her face out of the mass. He said her name. She barely heard it, but glanced around in the half-light of his cave, and wondered. For they were alone.

"I'm not showing you off, in case you were wondering," Koh said, with her mouth. "I'm thinking out loud. Do you know, the Avatar is dying?"

The Avatar. That name word something to her. She had once known the Avatar. She had once loved the Avatar. But that had been a very, very long time ago.

"Avatar Aang is one hundred and seventy-odd years old," Koh went on, "and _such_ a pity. If he could scrape along for two more paltry decades, he could witness the Harmonic Convergence… he could even…"

Koh interrupted himself, chuckling. "Well, I say witness it, there's no way he could _change_ any of it. The Avatar Cycle is nearing its end. After Harmonic Convergence, there will be no more Avatar. I feel it deep in my bones."

Koh bit his lip at the thought – she bit her lip at Koh's thought.

"And as such, it's really not worth it to keep you around. I'll be honest, this was a trick I planned out centuries ago, but, as it's something of a trump card, I wanted to hold it until the last possible moment – and now that moment has come. And so – "

Koh spat her out.

She splattered to the floor in a mess of slime. She struggled for purchase. Then she realized, she did not have a body of her own – only a flame of spirit, little more than a will-o-the-wisp.

No use thinking about it. She was no longer part of Koh. She turned her eyes up, towards the sunlight visible far ahead.

She was barely strong enough to move.

"Be so kind as to leave before the others of my collection see you," Koh said. She looked back up at him and saw his white mask with black eyes, regarding her with amusement. "I understand the human world has gotten quite interesting in the centuries since you lived. _Do_ enjoy it… for my sake."

She turned away from him. She didn't dare think. She collected herself and crawled, if a will-o-the-wisp can be said to crawl. Slowly, summoning greater willpower than she'd ever thought she had, she reached the exit. She bent her head before the light of the world.

Outside of Koh's cave, she rested on a platform of stone. She looked down into a swamp. The air smelled fetid. Carrion birds flew about, wearing masks of carved wood. One of them bore down on her, and she did not even have the strength to cry out. The bird picked her up, insubstantial as she was, and she looked down on the Spirit World, and felt wind in her hair.

And she thought, ' _This isn't too bad, at the end_.'

But it was not the end. The kind carrion bird flew her a great distance, towards a vast wheel of light, soothing and blinding. The woman reached for it, and as if sensing her desire, the carrion bird loosened its claws.

The woman fell into the wheel, into the light. Her last thought was, ' _Kuruk is going to miss me_.'

000

The birth was premature, almost as if the baby girl was in a hurry to enter the world. She was born in the United Republic, in sight of the sea, to parents who loved and welcomed her. Her mother, Yasuko, had a long list of names drawn up, but eventually picked a new name, one that just "felt right," she said. She named her daughter " _Asami_ ," for the beautiful ocean by which she had been born.


	2. In which Asami hears a story

Asami Sato grew up delighting her parents, an inquisitive and courteous soul who collected anything pretty that came into her hands.

Yasuko was Asami's first teacher. They would walk together through the sprawling gardens of the Sato estate, and teach and learn and play all together. Yasuko taught her daughter her letters, her numbers, and how to write her name. Asami's first calligraphy lessons were scrawling her finger in the pure white sand of the rock garden.

At sunset, they would sit in the west-facing garden and Yasuko would tell her stories about the spirits. As the world darkened to twilight and fireflies emerged, Asami would find it easier to believe in these mighty forces she had never seen. Yasuko also taught Asami to be courteous and cautious: to spit three times whenever she spoke of river spirits; to greet the sun every morning with a small bow; to still her face into stone whenever she mentioned Koh, the Face-Stealer.

There were more lessons – the tea ceremony, courtesy and charm, basic mechanical engineering – and Asami loved them all.

One day, Asami said she wanted to learn how to apply makeup. Yasuko laughed, and stroked her hair, and said Asami was far too young, pretty enough without, and anyway, there would be time for all that later.

000

Later never came. When Asami was still too young to wear makeup, her mother was killed in a terrible night filled with smoke, shouting, and cinders. It felt like Asami and her father spent a year weeping.

To try and move away from this tragedy, Asami's father, whose name was Hiroshi, decided she must know how to fight. He built a _kwoon_ on his estate, and Asami began lessons.

At first she took the lessons because she must, to please her father. But in the discipline it gave her, she found solace, and strength. To know that she wasn't helpless, that she could fight back – that meant the world to her. It helped her to heal.

On the first anniversary of Yasuko's death, Asami and Hiroshi visited her grave, and cleaned it by hand. At home, they lit incense before her portrait. They drank jasmine tea – it had been her favorite – and sat before it, with Asami leaning into her father's side.

"Asami," Hiroshi Sato said, "Six years is far too brief to spend with a woman like your mother. I'm sorry you did not get more time. But I'm grateful for the time that we _did_ have." He put an arm around his daughter. "Do you know the story of Avatar Kuruk?"

Asami shook her head, but thought that somehow the name sounded familiar.

"Kuruk was an Avatar of the Water Tribe, just like the Avatar of our own time. He was a mighty bender, and very proud and boastful. He lived in an era of peace –"

"Thanks to Yangchen," Asami interrupted. She loved the stories of Avatar Yangchen.

Hiroshi smiled. "Yes, thanks to Yangchen. He thought the best way to spend his days was in proving his strength. But he was defeated in one glance by a look from a woman – the most beautiful woman to ever live. Her name was Ummi."

 _Ummi._ It was an elegant word. Asami shivered. "What does that mean?"

"Why, I believe it means 'ocean,' just like your name." He kissed her forehead, and went on, "Ummi agreed to marry Kuruk, but only if he would give up his warrior ways. He threw his weapons into the sea at once, and they were to be married at the Spirit Oasis, the holiest site at the North Pole. But just as Ummi stood beside the pool, a spirit reached out and seized her, and pulled her down, into the Spirit World."

"Oh, no – oh, no!" Asami buried her head in her father's robe. "No, no, no…"

"It's all right, dear heart," he told her, stroking her hair and beginning to wish he hadn't said anything. "It all happened so long ago. Don't cry."

Through the muffled fabric, he could hear Asami say, "What happened next?"

"Kuruk went mad with pain. He leapt into the pool and dove down, to enter the Spirit World. There he met the shade of Avatar Yangchen. She told him that Ummi had been taken by an old spirit – Koh the Face-Stealer, whose appetite was worse than death."

Asami remembered what her mother had told her, and forced her face to be still.

"The shade of Yangchen counseled Kuruk that Koh, a selfish creature, had seen fit to punish Kuruk for his arrogance. Yangchen warned that if the Avatar were to pursue Koh, and lose his soul, the world might fall into chaos. Kuruk did not listen. He hunted the entire Spirit World in search of his wife, but Koh eluded him, and no other spirit would help him. Eventually, Kuruk returned to his own world, sunk with grief. But though his pride was broken, he remained determined. Once every year after that, Kuruk returned to that same oasis, and dove into the Spirit World, to hunt Koh and try to rescue Ummi."

"Did he ever find her?"

Hiroshi shook his head. "She was never seen again. My darling, I didn't mean to make you cry. All I wanted to say was, your mother and I had twelve years together, and I'm grateful for the time that we had. Every minute of it. Not everyone is so lucky."

Asami nodded, and pulled herself up from her father's robes. She hugged him closely and they cried together, for grief that was a year old, and griefs that were centuries old.

000

As Asami grew up, it seemed like she excelled at everything she set to work learning. Her teachers praised her natural talent, but her father knew there was more to her than that. She had an overwhelming curiosity for everything - physics and technology, innovation and design, fashion and art - and once she decided to learn something, she wouldn't stop until she'd mastered it. Being her father's daughter, of course engineering was most prominent in her education.

Simply put, Asami loved the world, and wanted to give her all to it.

Hiroshi Sato was only too happy to indulge her. When she turned fourteen, he decided it was time for her to expand her horizons, and meet other kinds of people.

First, they took a thorough tour of the United Republic, which Hiroshi held dearly as his homeland. Asami got to see the symmetrical city of Compass from the air, and explored the great opera house of the City of Industry.

Next came the Earth Kingdom. Hiroshi took her to visit the elegant salons of Zaofu, and together they studied the engineering of the vast domes. The community of inventors who settled in the foothills around the Northern Air Temple greeted them like cousins. Asami explored the slides of Omashu and the great breweries and distilleries on the edge of Foggy Swamp. They toured the Fire Nation extensively – and everywhere they went, they met family, kin of Asami's mother, who told her how pretty she was, how much she looked like Yasuko.

They visited the Southern Water Tribe for its Glowing Tide Festival, and Asami loved that place particularly. It felt like the South Pole welcomed her home. Her one disappointment was that she hadn't managed to catch a glimpse of the Avatar. Yes, the Avatar was living on a compound far away from the city, but Asami had her silly daydreams. After all, the two girls were nearly the same age. Maybe they could be friends.

Asami returned to Republic City a year and a half later, with a suitcase full of souvenirs, including seeds for the garden and vinyl records for an evening's entertainment.

One evening, she and her father were enjoying their after-dinner cup of tea. She was sixteen. They listened to the radio, their evening tradition before playing Pai Sho. It was through the radio that Asami heard the voice of Avatar Korra, for the first time: "I'm so happy to be here – thank you, Republic City!"

Over the applause of the crowd, Hiroshi Sato mused, "Sixteen, and with such a vast responsibility. Maybe too great for such a young girl. She hasn't even left the South Pole before!"

"Dad," Asami chided him, with a gentle smile, " _I'm_ sixteen."

"Yes, and you've been around the world. You know something of what people are like. I'm just not sure the Avatar knows what she's taking on."

"Maybe you're right," Asami said, stirring her tea. And she felt her daydreams beginning again. She and the Avatar lived in the same city. Maybe they could meet, and be friends.


	3. In which Asami falls in love

**Dreams**

The first time Asami saw Korra, she was standing in the middle of the gala floor in City Hall, standing ill at ease in a blue gown. Mako, on Asami's arm, whispered to her that he was sure they'd get along great.

Asami felt a sharp pang of dislike.

She didn't know why. She wasn't used to hating strangers on sight. She had dreamed of being friends with the Avatar, so what was this feeling?

The Avatar approached. Her father introduced them. "This is my daughter, Asami."

"It's lovely to meet you. Mako's told me so much about you," Asami said, elegant as could be.

"Really?" Korra replied, her arms crossed. "Because he hasn't mentioned you at all."

Asami's smile became fixed. Her dislike intensified, and for a moment it overruled her curiosity. But it passed. She did not shed her mask of charm. Yasuko had taught her to be charming.

Besides, why shouldn't Korra be stiff? The Avatar had been sheltered all her life, among good, simple Water Tribe folk, and here she was in the middle of a gala swarming with the upper crust. Who wouldn't be uncomfortable? And so, Asami gave the Avatar a pass.

That night, Asami had a dream.

In the dream, she was wearing a gown of blue wool, and silver pelts weighed down her shoulders. There were flowers in her hair. Around her neck was a stripe as blue as hope. She passed over bridges in a city of ice, a city that smelled of the sea. It was dark, but the moonlight grew steadily brighter and brighter. Soon the city was washed in silver.

Asami moved into a grove where grass grew, and the air was warm and sweet. She stepped onto a bridge and saw a man there, a man who was very like Korra – strong and sure, never afraid a day in his life. Asami's heart swelled with love to see him.

A movement in the water below caught her eye. She looked down –the waters stirred – there was light down there, and a force moving towards her, a terrible leviathan –

Claws whirled around her. She was sucked into the water, drawn deep, deep under. The moonlight vanished. As she choked, a name filled her mind, a name of terror and emptiness –

She awoke with a cry, sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat. Her heart raced.

The rest of the night she spent sitting awake, reading engineering manuals and trying to forget.

000

The daylight put the strange dream into perspective. A silly nightmare, that was all. Nightmares and sudden unexplained bursts of antipathy were nothing compared to the new, all-consuming presence in Asami's life: love.

All of her life, Asami had dreamed about being in love. What would that feel like? What would it be like to know she had found her match and mate, the person that she needed and who needed her? And now she had found him in Mako. He was all coolness and control, with that undercurrent of passion – of _fire_ – running beneath it all, manifesting in that sweet awkward earnestness that Asami found adorable. Asami delighted in showing him her world and hearing all the stories about his past, from his earliest memories to his exploits as a Pro-Bender.

To trust him and know she was trusted, to tell Mako every last thing on her mind, to know that they were thinking of each other all the time, to take care of him in little ways – Asami loved every minute of it, maybe more than she loved Mako himself.

At times she grew careless – showering him with luxurious gifts, without considering that such generosity might hurt his pride. The gifts that he liked best, though, were the simple things. Asami would unroll a fresh piece of parchment and do a quick ink painting of Mako, capturing his expression at that moment, and Mako would praise it wholeheartedly. That was when she knew that he cherished _her_ , Asami, not the industrial heiress or the stylish socialite. When she went to bed, she had much happier things to dream about than tragic endings.

000

Asami knew that her father liked to have two meetings to get a hold of a person. She arranged things so that Hiroshi met Mako first, at a nice dinner with Asami presiding. Clearly impressed, Hiroshi offered his sponsorship to the Fire Ferrets. After the team's victory over the Boar-Q-Pines, he invited the entire team out to dinner. Three days later, Hiroshi paused his busy schedule, and Asami her lessons, in order to sit in on a Fire Ferret practice and watch the team work - with a fine picnic for lunch, of course.

In their Satomobile, on the way back to the factory, Asami beamed. Now her father had met Bolin and Korra twice, and Mako three times. Asami had revised her first opinion of Korra. She was short-tempered, but quick to laugh and completely sincere. They could be friends, easily, Asami decided.

As her father shifted their vehicle onto the highway, Asami ventured to ask, "So, Dad… you've had your two meetings. What do you think of the team?"

"Bolin is the salt of the earth," Hiroshi said at once. "None too bright, but that's normal for an earthbender. He's friendly, though. You need that kind of glue to hold a team together."

Asami blinked, and prepared to offer a list of instances when Bolin had been quite bright enough, but her father wasn't done talking.

"Mako has got drive, I'll say that for him. He has good manners to when talking to me, but seeing him in action leading the team is… interesting."

Asami was going to ask interesting how, but waited. Next, Dad would mention…

"I must say, the real disappointment is Korra."

"Disappointment?"

"Oh, as a Pro-Bender she's fine. But she completely lacks foresight and patience. I had hoped for much better, from the Avatar herself. Some people, Asami, are natural-born leaders. Katara of the South is an example. Even as a young girl, she was a force to inspire."

"So, what are you building up to?"

"I'm saying that we need an Avatar today, who can rise to our challenges, today. Korra is not that leader."

"Some leaders aren't… naturally-born," Asami interrupted. "Like Sokka."

"Good girl! You've picked up something from those biographies after all." Hiroshi beamed.

"But, Dad, what does it matter if Korra's not a leader right now?"

His smile faded. "Someone growing into leadership is fine, if the world can wait for them. But Republic City is at a crisis point. I'd hoped for someone who could really listen to the Equalists, understand their grievances and work from the ground up. But, having taken the opportunity to observe Avatar Korra, I found an entitled, shortsighted girl who'd rather show off in an arena than listen to a new point of view. I'd rather not trust our city's future in her. Do you understand?"

Asami fell back, shocked into silence. Sure, her father was only holding Korra up to a high standard, like he held Asami. But something in his condemnation of her rankled. He'd _dismissed_ her so thoroughly. That was the word. Her, Bolin, and even Mako. In what he said about Mako, there was always a lingering, unsaid idea that Asami could and should do much better.

Well, that part Asami had taken for granted. That was what Dads were for.

But it was like the little ripples that indicate a change in the current. Asami started to notice, more and more, the way her father was changing.

He'd always subscribed to various magazines, to keep up with the political tides. But now she found pamphlets scattered on the parlor table. They spoke of a "Dawn of Equality!" and "An Equal Footing At Last!", peppered with far too many exclamation points.

Asami started to grow nervous when she accompanied her dad to parties or fundraisers. She would find her father in conversation with known unorthodox thinkers. At one point she heard him speak about Councilman Tarrlok, saying "He's a _waterbender_. He couldn't give you a straight answer if you put him in a straitjacket."

The men and women around Sato had laughed. Asami had blanched to think of Korra or Mako overhearing. She took her father's arm and said, sweetly but clearly, "But Dad, you could say that about every politician, couldn't you?"

More laughter, and Hiroshi smiled at his daughter's joke. But things did not improve.

Hiroshi Sato began to transform into someone Asami didn't recognize.

The worst was after the attack on the Pro-Bending arena, when Mako and Bolin came to live with the Satos. Asami loved having them around. The house had been so quiet before. But her father had taken to them badly. At first Asami thought it was just the fact that she hadn't asked permission. But later, she wasn't so sure.

After their first week there, Asami had decided it was time for an important milestone. She took Mako for a walk in the garden, and as the morning mists were rising, she showed him Yasuko's grave.

It was a beautiful moment, the silence, the light, the flowers all reaching in to hold them together. Mako cast a spark from his fingers and lit two sticks of incense, which Asami set into the well of sand. They leaned into each other, and Asami felt a bit of her future coming clear. This trust - this intimacy - was what she wanted, in life, in love. Forever and forever and forever.

And when she told her father, he grew angry.

"You showed him your mother's grave?" he asked, standing up from behind his oak desk.

"I know it's personal, and I know it's private," Asami said, her reasons all lined up, "but I felt like I trust him enough, and the time was right, and…"

"Trust him? He's a firebender," Hiroshi said, and he packed such hatred into that word.

"What difference does that make?" Asami asked.

"To a firebender, everything and everyone is kindling. After what happened to your mother… to show a firebender her grave…"

"Because I trust Mako!" Asami cried. "This afternoon Mako and Bolin were going to take me to the Fourth Municipal Cemetary to show me where their parents are buried."

Hiroshi fell silent. "Their parents?" he asked.

"Yes. Mako and Bolin's parents died in the Bolt Fever epidemic. Mako was going to show me their graves."

He ran a hand through his hair. "That was ten years ago… they were just children! Oh, monkeyfeathers." Asami laughed to hear him use his pet swearword, a relic from the days when Asami's innocent ears needed protecting. "Forgive an old man who's under a lot of stress. I get very… you know this time of year is very hard for me."

The anniversary of Yasuko's death was approaching. Asami nodded. "It's hard for me, too, you know. Of course I forgive you, Dad. But please try to be kinder to Mako and Bolin. Why would you hold the fact that they're benders against them?"

He shook his head instead of answering. "I should have been kinder to your friends. Go out and have a nice time. I need to get to work."

000

One night, she went to bed late, after checking on her Satomobile and equipment. Korra would be visiting tomorrow, and Asami was extending an olive branch, so to speak. Perhaps racing at fifty miles per hour around a racetrack was not other girls' idea of an "olive branch," but Asami had an idea that Korra would like it. And she wanted to get along with Korra, she really did. It wasn't Korra's fault that Asami had this lingering, odd feeling. Like resentment.

She stopped by Mako and Bolin's room on the way to her own. "Goodnight, boys."

"Goodnight!" called Bolin, already sinking into his featherbed.

Asami caught Mako's eye, and they exchanged a look – and an air-kiss – that stayed with Asami as she crossed the wing to her father's room.

"Goodnight, Dad," she called at his door. "I love you."

She could hear his pencil flying over thin graph paper. "I love you too, darling," he replied.

In her own room, it took a while for Asami to fall asleep. She couldn't help worrying about seeing Korra the next day. She kept picturing the two of them getting into a fight. There was just something _off_ between them, and Asami didn't know what it was.

She finally slept, and dreamed.

She was standing in a hall, with a cold hearth before her. The walls were stone that changed to panels of ice that met over her head, in great smooth panes. Asami ran her hands over the stone.

"Soon there'll be pelts on every wall," said a voice behind her. She turned to look, and there was that man, that Water Tribe man who was like Korra. "I'll hunt all autumn if I have to. But for now, a little warmth…"

He knelt before the fireplace and, with an enviable grace, bent fire into it.

' _The Avatar_ ,' Asami realized. ' _I'm standing before the Avatar_.'

He stood up, looking around, and Asami realized that he had built this house himself – bent stone from deep below the glaciers, curved ice into windows and a roof. This entire house had been built by bending. Realizing that made Asami feel helpless, powerless. His will surrounded her on every side.

"We won't live here all the time, of course," the man added. "You'll travel the world with me, helping me bring balance. You'll love flight – there's nothing like it!"

Asami quailed. Flight, power, responsibility, and bending: he had the world at his fingers. And who was she? She looked down. She glimpsed a blue necklace and grey furs. What did she have to give?

She must have asked that out loud, because in a minute the Avatar had crossed the room and cupped her face in his hands. His voice was almost gentle as he said, "Heart of my heart, don't measure yourself against me. Just think of our home, and the life we'll share. I bent the shape of it –" he gave a little shrug, "—but only you can give it its soul."

He bent down to kiss her—

—Asami awoke with a thrill. She opened her eyes to darkness, and remembered where she was. Twisting and searching, she lit her bedside lamp and pulled out a blue notebook – her dream journal. She began to write the dream down, every last detail, in shaky, next-to-illegible handwriting. And only when she finished and thought about it did she realize that the man had been Avatar Kuruk.

000

The next day, Asami was glad to be away from that house of ice and stone. Her own home was all she wanted. The flowers in the garden had never been so vibrant, the sunlight had never been so clear. Mako and Bolin were happy to have Korra around, and their team was complete.

Then things fell apart.

The next day, Korra had the nerve to walk up to Asami and say, "I think your father might be involved with the Equalists."

I don't believe this!" Asami cried, angry at once. She hurried up the stairs, to find her father and get the truth. Because it couldn't be true…

But as Mako came up beside Asami, taking the stairs three at a time, she started to feel afraid.

"Don't mind what Korra says," Mako told her. "She's such a hothead, always saying the first thing that comes to mind. I don't know how she roped Tenzin and Lin into it, but…"

Asami was barely listening. She could only remember the things her father had been saying lately. The observations, judgments, and jokes about benders. But it couldn't be true. It couldn't be.

Asami clung to the banister as she reached the second floor. Anger rose to prominence again. How dare Avatar Korra say that? How dare she come into their _home_ and slander Asami's father? After Asami had treated her like a friend? How _dare_ she?

Lin and Tenzin barged into Hiroshi's study, and Asami would have fought them off with her bare hands. But that wasn't necessary. Hiroshi was confused, but he explained himself with an air of perfect calm. Of course it had been a misunderstanding. Asami felt secure again. There was nothing her father couldn't repair.

Asami watched as the cops inspected every inch of the factory and warehouses. She glared at Korra, hoping that the Avatar realized how many hours of labor her little whim had cost Future Industries. Didn't she know _anything_ about capitalism?

Finally, they left, down to the last cop.

Bolin announced he was so worried he needed a swim to relax himself. Mako said he would walk around the garden. Asami went back upstairs, to talk to her father.

Hiroshi was bustling around his office, filing papers, double-checking and discarding them. "Dad?" Asami asked.

"What is it?" he snapped. But he caught himself, and shook his head. "My apologies, Asami. I'm afraid that visit rattled me more than I liked."

"Well," Asami said, "You sure handled it like a champ! I was really proud of you." She hesitated. "But, if you're busy now…"

"Never too busy for my little girl," he said. He slipped the papers into the proper filing cabinet and shut it, then turned to face her. "What is it?"

There was so much on Asami's mind. She wanted to say that he was right about Korra. There were a hundred small problems and worries she wanted to bring up to him, but, to her own surprise, she said, "I had a dream last night."

"Oh?"

"I wrote it down as soon as I woke up. I've been having strange dreams for a while now."

"But you're recording them? That's good." He nodded his head.

"Really? You don't think it's silly?"

"Not in the least. I find my own dreams make for very colorful reading later on. And I've often thought my dreams are some deeper part of me trying to send a message to the headquarters." He tapped his temple and smiled at her. "What was this dream of yours?"

Relaxed now, Asami retrieved her blue notebook and showed her father the sketch that she had made of the house, pointing out the Water Tribe details. She added, "I thought about it this morning, and I've put together a story. In the dream, I was going to be married, and my fiancé had made a house for us. I was touring the house for the first time. It was a very practical dream! I guess I'm a very practical young lady."

She glanced up, and, to her surprise, her father looked like he might cry. His eyes shone very bright and he turned away suddenly.

"Dad? What's the matter? Dad?"

"Sorry," he said, brushing at his eyes. "It's just… well. It's a bit surprising. I always thought that dreams are messages… and here you are, dreaming about getting married and building your own home."

"Dad!" Asami cried, then she laughed. "I'm not thinking about getting married. Not at all!" (In her thoughts, she swiftly reasoned that daydreams about Mako did not count.)

Hiroshi shook his head. "But you're starting to prepare. To take that next big step in your life. Oh, sweetie." He ran a hand over her hair, and smiled through his tears. "It's just that you're growing up so fast."

" _Dad_ …" Now Asami was tearing up, too. She hugged him.

"I promise," Hiroshi said, "I'll make a better world for you."

Asami didn't say anything, but just squeezed her father a little tighter. Then she stepped back, wiped her tear away, and smiled, chin up, shoulders back. "I'll let you get back to work," she said.

"I'll be very busy in my workshop, all evening," he said. "Don't wait on me for dinner."

"Okay. I think we'll listen to some records in the den."

"Have fun," he said.

At the door, she turned back to look at him. He was already bent over his work again.

Asami went downstairs.

000

The last time Asami saw her father, he was lit up with electricity from an Equalist gauntlet. "Dad, stop!" she called.

He turned to her. A thousand thoughts crowded through Asami's mind, ten thousand. Flooded with questions and emotions, she could only manage one word.

"Why?"

"Sweetie," he began, "I wanted to keep you out of this as long as I could. But now you know the truth, please, forgive me. These people, these _benders_. They took away your mother, the love of my life." And didn't Asami know his pain? Hadn't she felt it, keener than even he had? All these years?

"They've ruined the world, but with Amon we can fix it and build a _perfect_ world together. We can help people like us, everywhere!" He slipped off his glove – and Asami had never seen one so close before, but she recognized it, her father's handicraft in every joint and plug. "Join me, Asami," he said, gently, and of course, this was what they had always been, how they would always be. Father and Daughter, Sato and Sato, hand in hand to the ends of the earth.

And Asami's heart broke within her. Even with her world slipping away like the tide, even as she recalled every reason not to, she knew her choice already. She knew that _this_ , this was not the path to balance. And so she chose.

"I love you, Dad," she said. She stepped towards him. She had to keep eye contact. Don't betray a single emotion.

She just had time to see his eyes light up with relief and joy, before she activated the glove and cast lightning and shocked her father into unconsciousness.

And just like that, it was all gone. Her future crumbled away. Her family was dead. All she had left was… what?

Balance. She had balanced the world just a bit.

Mako came up next to her and slipped his arm over her shoulders. He said nothing. And Asami tried to take comfort in him.

Police took Hiroshi Sato into custody. More officers arrived, crowding on her family's land. Asami realized that they were going to sweep this place. She could not stay here; it was a crime scene.

"Tenzin says we can go to Air Temple Island," said Mako.

Asami had never been there. She tried to think. She would need to pack, need to take enough things to make a home wherever she went. But home could not be moved. Home was too many things. Home was where her mother was buried, the gardens she'd known since babyhood, the sunlight in the kitchen, her records, her workshop, and her books. Home was where her father was.

Home was gone.

Asami turned in towards Mako. She wanted to cry – crying would have been appropriate – but she couldn't. She stood stoic.

Eventually, she went inside. She was no stranger to traveling. She knew what to pack. She handled her things without memory or feeling, barely noticing Mako helping her. Suitcases full, she, Bolin, and Mako headed outside, to climb into one police car or another.

At the police station, Asami was the first to testify, in a detached tone. She waited in the lobby as the sun rose. She tried to imagine life at Air Temple Island.

Mako sat beside her on the bench. She dozed off against his shoulder, and dreamed of a house of ice and stone.


	4. In which Asami has questions

Two days after her arrival on Air Temple Island, Asami requested from the Acolytes a sheet of paper, a brush, and a paint-box.

She readied the temple's calligraphy set, and could not help remembering her father's advice. "Swiftness and confidence. Don't overthink it. Let your brush fly over the page, and it will show what is in your heart." The very memory made her choke up.

She wouldn't think of her father.

The brush jarred on the paper. She hesitated too long and it blotted. The lines were all wrong, at evil angles to one another. Nothing was right.

After a day, Asami got another sheet of paper. She focused on the sound of the waves. Weeping, sweeping in and pulling themselves out again. It had always calmed her.

This time, she dipped her brush in the ink and eased her hand. Like a current of water dashing over the rocks, her ink skimmed. She shaped the face, eyes, a long nose, a kind smile.

Asami wrote "YASUKO" down the side of the page, and cried for the first time since she left home.

After the ink had dried, Asami washed her face and hung her paper up in the room she shared with Korra. She lit some incense and sat down before it.

"Well, Mom," she said, "Here I am. I never thought that I would be here… on Air Temple Island. I'm not renouncing the world, but I guess I'm renouncing Dad. He's turned into someone I don't know. But I did the right thing, didn't I? For Korra and Bolin and the city? For Mako? I did the right thing by him. We're going to live happily ever after, aren't we?"

After a few minutes, she grew stiff. She leaned forward and snuffed out the incense. It was stupid, just talking to a picture.

Outside, Tenzin was sitting on an outcrop of rock, talking to the great statue of Avatar Aang.

000

The next morning, Asami woke up early – but without enthusiasm – for breakfast.

Air Temple Island was quiet and peaceful, and its people were welcoming, but it was a far cry from the luxury that Asami was accustomed to. Breakfast, for instance, consisted of a plain porridge or soup served cafeteria-style. There was exactly one periodical – _The Republic City Times_ , the city's most neutral newspaper – and not quite enough copies to go around.

Asami kept her head down and tried to go with the flow. She envied Korra. Here, the Avatar was clearly at home – if not among the Air Acolytes themselves, she was clearly a part of Tenzin and Pema's family. Mako and Bolin treated her like the sister they'd never had – at least, Asami told herself that was it. That was all Mako felt.

Asami was telling herself this, as she stood in line, when she heard Korra behind her.

"Good morning."

Asami jumped slightly, clutching her empty bowl. She turned around to greet Korra. "Good morning. You're up early…"

"Firebending practice. Morning's the best time."

"Ah." Asami did not know where to look – forward in line or backwards at Korra. She ended up looking stuck over her left shoulder.

The line moved very slowly. The awkwardness was palpable. Then, Korra coughed. As close to shy as she ever got, she asked, "Asami - who's Yasuko?"

"Oh! She's my mother."

"I kind of figured. She looks like you."

"She did," Asami agreed. She looked at Korra – Korra who had been the first to suspect Asami's father, Korra who liked Mako – and felt that odd stab of dislike again, now accompanied by resentment. _See what I did for you? What I sacrificed – for you?_

But then Korra said, "It's a really good drawing. I wish I could draw as good. Well, I mean. I… um, I write to my parents every week, and they share the letter with Katara. I've had Mako and Bolin write hellos… and I was wondering if you would like to maybe write something in my next letter? Please?"

Asami looked at Korra again. The Water Tribe woman standing behind her had changed. Korra was not the Avatar, and was not a rival. Korra was a stranger who wanted to be friends. She was another lonely soul, living in a strange city, far from home.

"Sure," Asami said, "Maybe I could add a sketch, as well."

"That sounds perfect! Thank you."

000

Time went by, and the war in Republic City intensified. Asami's dreams recurred, growing stronger as the moon waxed. They grew harder to bear. She awoke from dreams of laughter to a city at war. The dreams of sweet, young love turned bitter as, piece by piece, she lost her trust in Mako.

And the dreams ended the same way, each time more intense. The wedding that turned into horror, the force pulling her into water and darkness.

Asami would wake up, sweating and shaking, feeling her face desperately. Were the edges of her face stinging, like someone had tried to tear it? Or was she imagining it?

It grew into a full-blown spiritual crisis, and fortunately Asami was at that point living with the most spiritual community in Republic City. She wanted to approach Tenzin about the matter, but he seemed too forbidding. So instead, she braced herself, and went to Pema for advice.

While the benders practiced, Asami asked Pema if she'd share a cup of tea. Pema said she would be delighted. She made small talk while Asami settled uneasily at the low table. When the tea was steeped and poured, Pema maneuvered herself to sit opposite her.

"You've been looking pale these days," Pema said. "And worried. I wondered if there was something on your mind, but I didn't want to pry."

Asami reflected that she'd been certain Pema didn't like her, and was bound to take Korra's side in everything. Sometimes it was nice to be proven wrong. "I've been having strange dreams," Asami began. "In the dreams, I'm Ummi – Ummi the Lost. I'm wearing blue, and I'm in the Northern Water Tribe. I'm going to be married to Avatar Kuruk. He's built us a house, he's made me a necklace, and everything. And then… I go through the wedding, and... I relive the kidnapping. It terrifies me. It feels so real. What if it's a memory from a past life?"

"Well," Pema said, after a pause, "it's not as though the story of Ummi and Kuruk is a secret. Lots of people dream themselves into stories that they've read."

"But it doesn't feel like a dream - more like a memory. And the Southern Water Tribe - when I went there with - years ago, it felt like it was welcoming me home."

"You may well have been born there in a past lifetime, without having been Ummi. Asami, I can see that you're taking this very seriously," Pema added, "and I'm honored you came to me for advice. But… Koh doesn't just steal faces. He steals souls, and keeps them from being reborn. I've never heard of him letting anyone go. Ummi can't possibly reincarnate, not while Koh still has her face. So if you were Ummi reborn, then what's happened to make Koh let go of her soul?"

"Maybe Kuruk found her!" Asami exclaimed, brightening. "Maybe Kuruk found him and fought him and—"

"Kuruk wouldn't let her go either," Pema said, as if to herself.

"What?"

"Oh!" Pema started. "Did I say that out loud? I really did not mean to…"

"But what do you mean?"

"Oh, just that, well, if Kuruk did manage to rescue her from Koh, I can't imagine he would let her go… I mean, want Ummi to be born again. You'd think they'd want to be together. But that's –" Pema waved a hand, trying to dismiss what she'd brought up, "that's beside the point. Asami," Pema hesitated, "You're, well, I bet you hear this a lot, but you're mature for your age."

"Thank you," Asami said, feeling herself turn red.

Pema smiled kindly. "What I mean is, you don't go chasing after pain because you think it'll be glamorous. But that's what Ummi's legacy is. The most thrilling love story often means the deepest pain. Ummi's spirit would be scarred deeply by what she's experienced. Do you... " Pema hesitated. "Do you feel scarred?"

"No, but…" Asami folded, and buried her face in her hands. "But I feel connected to her. I feel…" She couldn't finish. Pema didn't press, but instead asked if Asami would help carve up squash for dinner.

So if Asami was Ummi reincarnated, that meant a legacy of pain. Well. Asami had had plenty of pain in her life. But was that what Koh had (theoretically) released her for? To experience pain?

Who could fathom the will of the spirits, especially spirits as old and as depraved as Koh was said to be?

Asami resolved to put it from her mind. Despite Pema's gentle suggestion, she did not go to Tenzin; no doubt he had much heavier matters on his mind than the dreams of a pampered heiress. Pema suggested an herbal tea as a sleep aid, and Asami drank it every night before bed. She slept, but still she worried.

000

Asami had lost her father over the course of an hour. From disbelief, to unwanted understanding, to the moment where she turned against him. It was a devastating hour, an hour of ruin. The one mercy was that Mako was there to greet her and comfort her in the floating world of Air Temple Island.

Then Asami realized she was losing her trust in Mako.

Her trust eroded over the course of days, which was almost worse. She told herself she was making it up. But she was too good an engineer to ignore the facts when they were in front of her.

She broke with him in a fit of temper. It was not a solid ending, but for her, it was enough. Asami grieved. She blamed her anger, and blamed her head, feeling like an idiot, a gambler who had lost everything on a bad hand.

And at first she had blamed Korra. She had known from the start that the Avatar was untrustworthy, and now here was the proof of it.

But there was a task ahead of them. Korra saw it as her mission – however sketchily defined – to defend Republic City. It was her adopted home. And Asami, whatever other feelings she harbored, hid, or showed, shared that conviction with her. Republic City had never been so dear to Asami than when she woke up every morning to see it gleaming on the other side of Yue Bay. So she put aside her devastation as best she could, to get out into their city, to search and fight with Bolin and Mako and – yes – Korra. They brought her into their team seamlessly. All Asami had to do was be worthy of their trust, and she'd always been a high achiever.

And when they worked together, Asami worked best with Bolin. He was unfailingly steady and cheerful, and more than happy to take the lead on any plan Asami made. Besides that, she simply had the least to hide from him. He had her back. He never said as much; he made no grand promises, but he was always ready with a smile or a manly thump on the shoulder. At a time when Asami might have forgotten how to trust entirely, Bolin was there for her.

When she went to reclaim Future Industries' airfield from Hiroshi Sato's control, of course Bolin went with her. She had disowned Hiroshi Sato as her father. That was simply fact. But after she subdued him, she needed a moment, a moment turned aside, for her shoulders to shake and her breath to hitch. When she turned back, face composed again, Bolin said nothing. He just asked Asami where they would go next.

"Next" was with General Iroh, on his warship. "Next," after an afternoon's skirmish, was waiting by his phone line for further updates. Apparently, "Hurry up and wait" was a big part of warfare.

From the deck, Asami and Bolin could see some kind of commotion taking place by the Pro-Bending Arena. General Iroh called for a telescope, and they took turns watching and trying to figure out what was happening. But they didn't have clarity until an hour later, when they received a call from General Bumi. The senior General's tone was brusque and blunt. Amon had gotten away, but his power base had been destroyed, because wouldn't you know it, the sly old dog had been a Waterbender the entire time. His image was ruined. The movement should be imploding as we speak.

Amon had managed to get in a few strikes, though. The Avatar had lost all of her bending.

Asami heard that, and understood she had to have _some_ emotional reaction, but wasn't sure which would be best. There was shock, yes, and pity. But there was also a pang of spite. Korra's pride had gotten her what she deserved.

That thought shocked Asami.

She stepped away from Bolin and the army officers, to quarrel with herself. She made a resolution. Heartbreak and spite was what had turned her father into a monster. Asami would not take that path. She set it into her mind to be extra kind and gentle to Korra when they met – to spite her own spite, as it were. Kindness was part of who Asami was; it was her legacy from Yasuko, who had always shown gentleness and courtesy. Asami made her decision, and prepared to meet Korra, someone who needed her.

General Iroh told them that Bumi had told _him_ that Tenzin was making plans to travel immediately to the South Pole, where Katara, the greatest healer in the world – and Korra's teacher – lived. Asami and Bolin were included as a matter of course. They were part of the team.

They rejoined the larger group on Air Temple Island. On the journey South, Asami took her cue on how to act from Pema. And the young lady realized that acting kind could awaken feelings of genuine kindness.

It was good to prove herself wrong.

The South Pole was where Korra first reached the Avatar State – as she told the group later. The South Pole was also where Mako and Korra finally expressed their love and, well, they got together.

The news did not hurt Asami as much as she'd thought it would. She felt something more like relief. The blow she'd been waiting for had come. The worst was over.

Asami bundled herself up very warm and headed out onto the ice, by herself. She was back at the South Pole, and despite everything she'd been through, one thing hadn't changed: it still felt like it welcomed her home. She lifted up her eyes and watched the stars, shining on the glaciers like a thousand candles. And she felt, despite everything, peaceful.


	5. In which Asami is embarrassed

When the Air Temple Island company sailed north for Republic City, Asami had looked southward with melancholy, wondering when she would ever see the South Pole again.

The answer was, sooner than she thought.

Half a year passed between the visits. Asami had had a steep learning curve to learn how to run Future Industries. Knowing how to create, drive, and maintain Satomobile upside down and inside out – which she did – was not enough. She had to learn all the various ways to steer her company, for the sake of the workers who depended on her, and the Sato family name.

Asami would read through _The Republic City Times_ of a morning, and would read about herself. She was surprised by the alternate selves she found there. There was Asami Sato, the beautiful fashion icon – flattering. There was Asami Sato, the jilted, scheming romantic rival to the Avatar – uh, no thank you. And then there was Asami Sato, the incompetent, naïve little girl bungling up her daddy's company – cause to crumple the paper in her hands and throw it across her office.

It seemed that Asami's reputation preceded her. Her youth meant that no one trusted her, or else thought she would be easy to dupe. Her father's actions meant that investors and customers alike shunned her. Even six months on, no one wanted to be associated with the Equalists.

It was time to dive headfirst into the game of politics, influence, and money. She singled Varrick of the Southern Water Tribe out as a likely ally. He was known for his arbitrary but generous sponsorship, looking to expand his market into the United Republic. And he was known to be contrary – for all Asami knew, he could choose to fund her company precisely _because_ of the shattered reputation. He was a showman, and there were few shows better than a comeback story.

And so, Asami sailed back to the South Pole with Korra, Mako, and Bolin – nominally for the Glacier Spirits Festival, but also, for the interests of Future Industries.

At the South Pole, the large traveling party stayed in town, in a housing complex that was just off of the Hall of Justice. But for the all-important meeting with Varrick, Asami was going to have to sail across the bay. She was going to have to face the eel-tiger in its own den, as the saying went. At least Bolin had agreed to go with her.

Asami started to get ready early; applying her makeup and going over, for the hundredth time, her company proposal. When she was finally ready, she hurried through the kitchen. The foyer held her most cumbersome cold weather gear. In the kitchen door, she halted. Korra was standing at the stovetop, and there were two people – identical and androgynous – sitting at the table.

"Hey, Asami!" Korra said. "Meet my cousins, Eska and Desna. Ee, Dee, this is my friend Asami."

"We told you never to call us by those nicknames," said one of them – Asami didn't even know which. The one with slightly less eye makeup.

"Too late!" Korra said cheerfully. "We're just getting some hot tea before we go on an adventure. Want some?"

"Nope," Asami said from the foyer door. She had found her overcoat and was buttoning it up. "On my way to my own adventure."

"Oh! What is it?" Korra took a heavy swig of her tea. "We're going to open up a magical, ancient portal for the Spirits!"

"I'm on my way to broker a business deal and the fate of my company hangs in the balance!" Asami said, equally brightly.

"Best of luck!"

"Yeah, you too!"

Asami caught Korra's eye, and they grinned at each other. Then, her briefcase in hand, Asami hurried out the door, feeling her pockets for her gloves. She was halfway to the docks before she had time to wonder if Korra had been serious.

Well, if she was… Avatar stuff. Asami shrugged. She did not think any more about Spirit Portals.

Until that night, when she had another dream – the most vivid one yet.

It was the morning of Ummi's wedding. The last day that she would spend with her family. The women of her household were tending to her, making her into a bride worthy of the Avatar.

"You look so beautiful, Ummi," said her sister.

"The most beautiful woman in the world," said her mother.

"The most beautiful woman to ever live," said her grandmother.

"Look," they said together, "Look into the mirror."

Ummi looked into the mirror, and the ice was blue and her gown was blue and her necklace was blue but her face was blank, blank, blank, there was nothing there.

Asami woke up with a scream. Her every nerve was jangling with terror.

She got up and looked out of her window. In the distance glimmered the Spirit Portal. Asami, whispering, wished Korra had kept the damned thing closed.

000

The nightmare haunted Asami something terrible, even when they returned to Republic City. It revived her half-buried curiosity about Avatar Kuruk and his lost beloved. It felt like something was unresolved, a puzzle in pieces, a weave half-done. She needed answers.

Asami approached Tenzin. Swallowing her shyness, she asked him if she could join meditation. She said, "I've had dreams – visions, I think – from a past lifetime. I want to understand them better. I need to know."

Tenzin was delighted with her interest and the challenge she presented. It would be best, he said, if she could stay at the temple, at least until she got the hang of meditation and could practice it on her own time. Asami agreed to that. She realized she'd been more afraid of Tenzin than he really warranted. He was, at heart, a teacher.

The first meditation lesson was… surprising.

Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo were there – which Asami had expected. Pema was there, and Asami smiled to see her. Korra was there – which pleased Asami more than she'd anticipated. But then, the dozen or so other Air Acolytes, all near-strangers, were not quite what Asami had counted on.

Asami had also hoped that Tenzin would be discreet. Instead, Tenzin turned her question into a group project. At the start of meditation, he gave a lecture for everyone to contemplate.

"The Wheel of Rebirth connects all times, and all people," he said. "Remembering our place in the Wheel awakens compassion and humility."

Meelo nearly flew into the air. "What if I was a pirate in a past life? Huh? Huh? Maybe I can remember where my treasure was buried!"

Tenzin frowned at his son's greedy delight. "Meelo, your past life is just that - in the past. The self is an illusion, as you well know."

Meelo pouted. Ikki frowned, as if she liked her present self very much, thank you. Only Jinora nodded as if she understood. Tenzin went on, "Most past lives fade into obscurity while we pass between one body and the next. Memories drift away and are forgotten. This is natural and healthy. But great sources of pain and love may linger through the ages. Even if one is not the Avatar, it can be greatly beneficial to try and reach one's past selves, and sound out what you find there."

"Your past lifetime" became a nine days' wonder at Air Temple Island, to Asami's chagrin. At mealtimes the dining hall would echo as the acolytes traded dreams and curiosities that might have been echoes of the past. Ikki declared she'd "gotten in touch" with her previous self, an animal trainer in a Fire Nation circus. An acolyte named Otaku began to obsessively draw maps, trying to restore the skills of a long-lost cartographer. It seemed like every other woman on the island was certain that in a past lifetime she had been the famous Oniyuri, or Renge the Splendid, or another of history's great beauties. Other Air Acolytes, behind their backs, laughed at such grandiose claims.

Asami could only imagine the laughter if anyone found out that she thought she was Ummi the Lost, reborn.

But nobody did find out. Pema kept Asami's confidence, and Asami felt more comfortable confiding in her than in Tenzin. Tenzin just needed to know that Asami had the hang of meditation, and that it was helping. Pema was just as practiced in meditation as her husband, and soon Asami trusted her as much as any teacher she'd ever had.

Asami had no visions in meditation, but in sleep, her dreams became more diverse. In these dreams, a life took shape – a world before the advent of her husband. Ummi, a quiet little girl, had played counting games with seashells on the white beaches of the South Pole. Ummi had worn black paint with pride when she passed into womanhood. In a sprawling clan of cousins and siblings, Ummi wanted to stand out. Ummi had never bent water, but she'd had a head for numbers. She had been the quartermaster of the ship that sailed to the North Pole, managing food and supplies for over a hundred travelers.

All of this Asami recorded in her blue notebook, but the entries frustrated her. They were only fragments of the rich life that she know Ummi must have had. In dreams, she could almost grasp the whole.

Eventually, the "previous lifetime" craze at Air Temple Island began to fade. Asami sighed with relief. And then, one evening, after she had shared dinner with Pema and Tenzin's family, she roomed for the night with Korra.

Just after Asami turned out the light, Korra asked, from the other side of the room, "Hey, you're the one who suggested the past lifetime meditation to Tenzin, right?"

"Yes," Asami answered. She felt herself beginning to turn red. "I know, you're probably super bored with it…"

"No, not at all. I just wonder why?"

Asami swallowed hard. She had to stop her heart from beating so loudly. "Well… the night that you opened the Spirit Portal, I had a dream… it wasn't the first time. I think they were trying to tell me something… You know."

"Then they probably were. Anything special about them?"

' _I was getting married. I was getting married to_ -' "I think I was from the Water Tribe… and I knew you - the Avatar - in the past."

"No way!" She was delighted. "Which incarnation of me was it?"

"It was… Kuruk, I think."

" _Whoa_. I always liked him," Korra said, falling back onto her pillow. "Always liked his stories." Asami prayed she was done there, but Korra asked one more question. "How exactly did you know me?"

' _I was Ummi, only the most tragic figure in all Water Tribe history. You were the Avatar, and you failed to save me, but you loved me very much, and I loved you and I was ready to spend my life with you_.'

"I don't remember," Asami said. "I just knew you."

"Ah." Korra waited for Asami to say something else, but when the other girl remained silent, Korra said "That's still pretty cool. Goodnight, then," and that was it.

000

It was a very strange season.

There came a day when Asami found herself going back to Mako for comfort. It felt right, to go back to him – a safe port when the rest of her life was storming and bizarre. Korra had ended things, he'd said, and now she'd left Republic City without a trace. Asami wondered, and worried about her, but she needed her own comfort, too. So she welcomed Mako, and she wondered how they had ever broken up in the first place, and she was completely sure that she was happy.

That night, she had another dream.

It started out on the open ocean, under a dark sky. Asami was floating on the sea, and there was no sight of land. She turned her head, and Korra was floating beside her. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn't fighting the waves.

"Korra," Asami said. "Korra, wake up. You'll drown."

Korra did not wake up, but she did not sink below, either, so Asami floated beside her, reaching her hand out to grab Korra's. But she never found her hand. They just drifted. Asami could not move herself.

Above them, the clouds parted; the stars dimmed; the sun began to rise. Asami turned her head, and saw an island. A red temple gleamed among the jungle foliage; smoke lifted from the trees.

"Korra, wake up, wake up," Asami said, but Korra still did not wake up. Asami tried to stir, but she was helpless in the water.

A tricky riptide pulled Korra away, towards the island. Asami stared as Korra vanished from sight, and people left the temple, priests in red. They were looking for her, for the Avatar. Asami wanted to cry out, ' _I'm here too! Find me!_ ,' but she started to sink instead. Slowly, the water darkened the sky. She could breathe, but Asami was afraid.

The light around her went from blue to grey to nothing. She floated in blackness, and light dawned on her slowly. But she found she was facing down. Now she was floating in the sky, looking over a great barren plain.

Below her, Avatar Kuruk hunted a monster.

Asami watched them, not sure whether she feared more the long, armored centipede shape, or the ragged hunter with his polished spear and wolfish eyes.

Finally, the prey halted before a wide river. They were in the oxbow of it; nowhere to turn. Asami wanted to cover her eyes, because this river was the brightest, most merciless white she had ever seen in her life. A waterfall thundered, not far away.

The spear was up, the man ground himself. He did not smile.

The prey turned around, and in the river's glare Asami could barely make out its face: a smooth curve of porcelain, two black holes far larger than any eyes should be.

"Enough," said the prey, in a deep, male voice. "I'm trapped. I surrender. One touch of the River of Remembrance shall send me into the most unutterable agonies… one step forward and you shall gut me on your spear. Well, Kuruk. You have finally caught me. Now… will you have your revenge?"

"You may go in peace, Koh the Devourer," said Kuruk, his voice ragged. "Just give _her_ back to me."

"And you will let me go?"

"I will let you go. I swear by the Moon and Ocean."

"Very well." The spirit lowered itself in a bow, and Asami could see it flicker through its faces. "You may collect your prize." The brown lips opened to reveal a beautiful woman: black hair cascading, skin flushed in expectation. She smiled at Kuruk.

Kuruk remained as he was. The spear's obsidian point was unbudged. "That's not her," he said.

"Are you sure?" asked the spirit, his voice deep and caressing.

"I am sure."

"Oh, my. Forgive an old spirit whose mind is going… Now... she must be…"

Another woman's face, with wide, mournful eyes and a crown of tundra flowers.

"That's not her, either," said Kuruk.

"Are you sure? It has been such a _long_ time…" The face changed again, became a weary old hag, ravaged by time. Kuruk was almost shocked into believing that he recognized her, but he cried, "That is not her!"

"And you won't leave without her, will you? Even if a thousand other faces rot away within me?" The crone's face disappeared into the pallor of a frightened girl. "Did you ever even value her, at all, except for her precious beauty?"

"I am very tired, Koh. I will not play these games. I ask with all my heart's piety, give Ummi back to me."

In answer, Koh revealed another woman's face, and another, and another. Water Tribe maidens, Earth Kingdom mothers, Fire Nation crones, Air Nomad mystics. The spear in Kuruk's hand trembled. He waited, watching each face without recognition, as many faces as a springtime cherry tree has petals. Then the faces ran out and there was only Koh, laughing with the head of a jaguar.

"Koh, please." Kuruk said.

"She is not here."

"You are lying."

"I do not have her."

"Koh! You surrendered!"

More laughter. "I swear by the white river where you have me penned… Why, I swear by its inky black twin, too! I let Ummi go. Years ago, I released her to the winds of chance. Seek her in this world or the other. I do not know where she is."

Kuruk fell to his knees, his spear rolling away. He opened his mouth as if to scream –

Koh looked up and – he looked directly at Asami –

And he smiled.

Asami woke up. She wanted to forget this dream, but she could not.

000

Asami did not personally see most of the drama around Harmonic Convegence. She was in the South Pole, and was tasked with ferrying Tonraq to safety. Most of what happened, she heard of after the fact.

It seemed typical, somehow. The world had been completely rearranged in a few hours, and Asami had somehow found a way to be looking the other direction.

That evening, when things had quieted down, Asami radioed Future Industries back in Republic City, and made sure everything was shipshape. She talked Pema into resting, rather than sitting anxiously over Jinora's bed. Finally, Asami went to sleep, solitary and exhausted.

Yep, a once in ten thousand years event, and Asami wasn't even paying attention.

Asami chided herself for being so self-pitying. Finally, she fell asleep, content that the upheavals were over.

She dreamed.

Asami dreamed that Avatar Kuruk stood in front of her. His face was careworn and carved with lines of sorrow, but when he saw her he smiled, and it was like lighting a fire on the tundra.

He called her: "Ummi."

Asami said nothing. She glanced around at their setting. It was a realm of color and shifting light that she thought might have been the Spirit World.

"I've found you—Ummi, at last, you're free." Kuruk reached towards her, and his hands came to rest on her shoulders, but it was as if the ocean was trying to embrace her. His hands collapsed into seawater, his arms dissolved into foam. "Ummi," he said again.

Kuruk shook his head. Now his eyes filled with unspoken grief. Everything about him turned into sea foam. The last thing to dissolve was his face. He kept his eyes locked on Asami's, and said, in a voice that was as mournful as the tide, "I wish you… every happiness."

When he was gone, when he was nothing, Asami woke up. She lay in a strange bed in a strange land, and she sobbed without knowing why.

Gradually, her tears subsided. She drew herself into wakefulness. The cold air was prickly and unwelcoming. She found her hand, stared at it as if she'd never seen it before. She was in the Southern Water Tribe, she remembered. She was far away from home.

The dream sank into her memory. Asami would never forget it.

She gathered warmth slowly. Finally she braved the cold outside of the bed. Armed with her slippers and warmest dressing-gown, she ventured to the kitchen.

Korra was there, alone at this early hour. She was stirring a big pot of soup on the stovetop. As Asami entered, the other girl looked back at her and smiled.

"Good morning," she said. "You're up early."

Asami thought, ' _There's something different about you. Or maybe I just see you differently. All my lingering feelings - the resentment and confusion - are gone. It's like I know you, but I'm seeing you for the first time_.'

Out loud, she said, "So are you."

"Just woke up and couldn't sit still. Soup?" Korra ladled soup into two chipped bowls. "I feel like I could run around the South Pole. I want to climb the tallest mountain in the world. I'm absolutely bursting with energy!"

"And you're cooking?"

"I had to do something." Korra glanced at Asami. "Hw are you doing?"

She didn't answer right away. "Bewildered." She thought about mentioning the dream, but chose not to. "I could use some soup." She took the bowl that Korra offered.

"I'm afraid I'm no great shakes when it comes to recipes," Korra said, apologetically.

Asami smiled and – with some trepidation – tasted the soup. It was quite good. "I like it," she said. She was rewarded by the sight of Korra's face lighting up. "You know, you cook the same way that you bend. Maybe not accurately, but with great expression."

Korra laughed out loud. Then she covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh, no. I'll wake someone up."

"Is that a problem?" Asami asked.

"It's so early!" Korra whispered loudly. "And Katara has trouble getting to sleep these days!"

Korra and Asami listened, but there was no sound of footsteps.

"I don't think we're in any danger," said Asami slowly. "But I think it's sweet how worried you are about Katara."

Korra shrugged, and looked a bit confused, as if she wondered how anyone could be less than worried and loving. "I still want to run for miles and miles," she said. "You should see the ice just before dawn. Watching the sun light it up. It's so beautiful."

"I'd like to see it. The ice, I mean."

"How about it, then? You, me, and Naga. A quick run over the ice. Just as soon as we finish our soup."

"Sounds perfect." Asami, on an inspiration, held up her bowl of soup for a toast. "To the new spiritual age."

"To the new spiritual age!" Korra clinked her bowl against Asami's, and they drank well. Korra, after swallowing, said, "Now, it's coldest out there at this hour, so bundle up real well. I have some spares if you need them…"

A new friendship began.


	6. In which Asami has an epiphany

After Harmonic Convergence, the dreams stopped.

Asami told no one about her vision of Avatar Kuruk. Instead, she threw herself into the work of Republic City, a city that she now had to bend around Spirit Wilds and spirit whims.

Until, that is, word came of the new Airbenders.

Tenzin organized an expedition to search for and recruit them, and Korra called Asami to make sure she knew that she was invited. She had also relayed, on Tenzin's behalf, a request for an airship to rent –"Any model will do" – to find new Airbenders with all due speed.

Asami decided she'd do her one better. Only Future Industries' finest was worthy of such an adventure. Asami was up late, making calls, making promises, and making threats to her head of warehousing if she didn't get precisely the model she had in mind. Asami got her model, ended things on a friendly note, and hung up the phone. She prepared for bed with a clear conscience. Tomorrow was going to start a new adventure, and Asami planned on paying attention for every minute of it.

Finally, Asami filled an entry in her personal journal. As she was almost ready to close it, she hesitated. She left it open on the desk and stood up. She pushed the chair back.

Spine straight, feet apart, hand open, fingers together. She took a deep breath, and – she'd seen Korra do this a thousand times – stepped forward – and _bent_ –

Nothing.

Not so much as a ruffle of paper.

Asami swallowed hard, closed the book, and prepared to go to bed and keep this moment a secret forever.

Not that she wanted it. Not that she was ashamed of who she was.

But maybe it would have been nice.

000

Traveling through the Earth Kingdom, in search of stray Airbenders, was nothing like traveling with her father. Tenzin shepherded the group from one location to another with strict punctuality. Asami supposed she should have admired such a businesslike attitude, but it she would have liked more time to linger and dwell. To Mako, Bolin, and Korra, this was a first-time visit to the Earth Kingdom, and Asami wanted to play tour guide.

One day, Korra decided to accompany Tenzin on his Airbender-scouting mission in a steppe town called Hohhot. Left to themselves, Asami, Bolin, and Mako strolled around the town square, and ended up taking tea in an open-air café.

"Aaaahh, this is the life!" Bolin exclaimed, stretching and tilting back his head to take in the fresh spring breeze. "Getting away from that city air, that squalor… Wide open space! Green as far as the eye can see!"

"I'll say," Mako agreed. "You know, Dad always meant to take us back to the Earth Kingdom but he never got around to it."

"Did your dad grow up around here?" Asami asked.

"Nah," Bolin shook his head. "Old ancestral home in Ba Sing Se, last we heard."

Asami nodded. "The Sato family… we have some Earth Kingdom ancestors, but we're really United Republic, through and through."

"Yeah? But that makes sense. Your family's been in the colonies, like, forever," Bolin said.

Asami lapsed into silence. She wondered. If she was the reincarnation of Ummi, then, in theory, a Water Tribe soul should have been reborn into the Earth Kingdom. But Republic City didn't really count as the same. Or did it? Hiroshi Sato had identified as a Republic Citizen, but Yasuko had been only second-generation Fire Nation. She had worn crimson and scarlet, spent her mornings in the garden watching the sun come up, and taught Asami counting games that tallied embers instead of flowers.

So where did Earth fit into this? Asami didn't know, except that she loved a well-tended garden, and thought she was very practical and reliable…

She shook her head. It didn't matter. The solid rock of Earth was spitting out Airbenders, without rhyme or reason; in a world like that, it didn't do to second-guess reincarnation.

"Mako, Bolin…" she asked, stirring her tea, "do you ever think about reincarnation?"

"Yeah," Mako admitted. "It kind of scares me. I don't like the idea of being wiped clean. That sounds like just losing everything that makes me, _me_. I've been through a lot of pain in my life, but I wouldn't want to just forget it, and then be sent back into the world without a clue."

"Huh!" Bolin stared at him in surprise. "I had no idea you felt that way, big brother."

Mako shrugged, and fiddled with the edge of his scarf. "I kind of hope that Tenzin's wrong about that, you know?" Asami nodded. "I'd rather have an afterlife where I get to be with the people I love, not just be erased entirely."

"I get what you're saying, Mako," Bolin started, "But I've heard about reincarnation _aaaall_ my life, and I think it makes perfect sense!"

"Really?" Asami asked. "How?"

"See, Tenzin said once that everything spiritual reflects a physical reality." Mako and Asami just had time to exchange confused glances before Bolin swung an arm around his brother's shoulders. " _For example_ , look at Mako and I. We've reincarnated several times within our own lives. For a few years, we're happy kids with a happy home. Then, disaster strikes! We're orphans, climbing our way through the school of hard knocks. Nothing we knew before will help us now. For all intents and purposes, it's a totally different life."

"And then you became Pro-Benders…" Asami said.

"Yep! And then we met Korra, and then _you_ , and everything's changed again! We're friends of the Avatar, doing good work all over the world. I may as well have lived five different lifetimes! Reincarnation? I've lived it! So, what I'm saying is, theologically speaking and all, it only makes sense. Change is the way of nature. That's why I always try to embrace it," Bolin finished, beaming. He took a swig of tea.

"Wow!" Mako exclaimed. "You're quite the philosopher, little brother!"

"You ought to tell that to Tenzin sometime," Asami added. "That was really interesting!"

"Aw, shucks. Thanks." Bolin raised an eyebrow at Asami. "And why _are_ you interested? What do you think about reincarnation?"

"Oh. I believe in it," Asami said.

"Care to elaborate?" Mako asked.

Asami shook her head, with a smile. Bolin laughed, Mako said she was being coy, but smiled, and they paid for their tea and got ready to head back to the airship.

000

Ba Sing Se was not what Asami had hoped for. It wasn't what any of them had hoped for. While the Palace gardens were beautiful enough for a lifetime's worth of wandering, Asami didn't like the fear that lay behind every courtier's smile. She welcomed the chance to leave the city with Korra, by airship… Although she had her doubts.

"Are you sure we shouldn't have brought more people to collect the tax money?" Asami asked Korra as they ascended.

Korra, standing at the helm, shrugged. "There are royal guards waiting at the vault. I doubt anything will happen." The look she gave Asami was singularly miffed. "I think Her Majesty likes ordering me around."

There was a quiet moment, where Asami adjusted the airship to the altitude, and tried to figure out what to say next. Something clever – Asami wanted to impress Korra, the way that Bolin had impressed Asami the other day. But she couldn't draw any deeper insight into the situation, other than, "Well… in a lifetime of ordering people around, she's never yet bossed the Avatar."

Korra snickered. "She may have bossed Aang around at one time or another. Or tried to. You know he was officially one of her godfathers?"

"I had no idea."

"It was a huge honor granted by King Kuei. Maybe that makes it more of a power trip for her." Korra gave a little shudder. "She's so off-putting, though. All that perfume she wears, and the way she yells at everyone… and have you seen her fingernails? What's the deal with those?"

Asami remembered the Queen's hands, the exaggerated talons on the third and fourth fingers. "It's an old-fashioned style," she said. "I think the idea is that if you grow out your fingernails so that you can write, but not do anything harder than that, it shows the world how rich you are, that you don't have to do any labor."

"Really?" Korra made a face. "That's the stupidest, most selfish, most… most… _useless_ thing I ever heard of! I'm glad it's fallen out of style. As if I didn't have enough reasons to dislike her! Ugh. I wish I could ask Avatar Aang about the Queen. I know he met her when she was a little girl, but no one seems to know…"

"You can't talk to Avatar Aang?" Asami asked.

A confused glance back. "No. You didn't know? Not since Harmonic Convergence. It breaks my heart."

"Oh…" Harmonic Convergence. When her dreams had stopped.

"I didn't talk to Avatar Aang enough. I should have really gotten to know him. It's like… it's like if I had a grandfather who died just after I…" She shook her head. "But, nevermind. That's in the past."

"You did talk to him, at least. That matters."

Korra set her eyes to the helm, out the window of the airship, and she gave a slightly pained smile. "I'd take an hour out of the day – when I remembered – when I had time for it – and I'd sit on the beach on Air Temple Island. And… Aang and I would talk. It was amazing. I was thinking he'd be like Tenzin – and Tenzin's great, but he's kind of a steamroller, you know? One lecture and then another."

"He's a teacher at heart."

"Exactly. But Avatar Aang didn't lecture me. Not in the least. He wanted to know everything about me and my life. He asked about Republic City, of course. Katara, and how his kids were doing. He was very interested in movers and radio dramas. And he really wanted to know about my friends. You, and Bolin and Mako. Once, he said that we all worked as a good team. That meant a lot, coming from him."

Korra's tone was simple, but Asami's breath caught. A team. Hiroshi Sato had talked about what kind of a team Mako, Bolin, and Korra made. And he had not been as generous as Avatar Aang.

"Is something wrong?" Korra asked, looking back at her.

Something wrong. Between Harmonic Convergence forever sundering Korra – and Asami – from the mysteries of their past lives, to an unwelcome reminder of her father, and all those attendant emotions. Asami struggled with herself a minute, whether to talk, or would it be worth the effort, or…

"I'm fine," she said stiffly to Korra. "I'm just… hey, tell me some more about Avatar Aang."

Korra blinked. "Uh… sure. If you're that interested. Did you know he always wanted to run his own radio show, but never had the time?"

"Tragic," Asami said, congratulating herself, dourly, on her charm and vivacity.

000

Asami had seen Korra meditate before. But watching Korra meditate to enter the Spirit World, at the Misty Palms Oasis, was different. It was unsettling. Though her body stayed in one place, some instinct at Asami's core told her that Korra had slipped away. The _Korra_ part of her was gone, in another world. Asami couldn't help but picture it as Korra's spirit taking a great leap and a dive into deep water – where Asami couldn't follow.

What followed – their capture by the Earth Queen's forces, hijacking an airship singlehandedly, and then the mad escape and invention in the desert – was a whirlwind. And just when it seemed like things might calm down – when the Misty Palms Oasis was back in sight – things were shoved upside down again. The radio announced that the Earth Queen had been assassinated.

Korra remained calm. Asami was impressed with how calm Korra was. Korra looked appreciably serious and thoughtful as Lord Zuko told her the news and all additional information that his sources could gather.

Abruptly, Korra said that she was thirsty, and Tonraq offered to order her something at the bar, but Korra said she would get it herself. Asami noticed Korra get up and walk out the service entrance. After a few minutes, Asami excused herself and followed her.

She found herself in an empty, dusty alleyway sinking into dusk. She heard rumblings down to her right, and followed them.

She found Korra in an empty lot, bending bricks and discs out of the earth, pulverizing them with a blow, and then reshaping them again, all with a furious force.

"Korra!" Asami cried. Korra turned. "What's the matter?"

"Go away, Asami," Korra said.

"After you tell me what you're doing."

Korra scowled, and slammed her foot into the earth, sending cracks out for six feet around her. She took a gulping breath, and Asami was shocked to see tears spilling from her eyes.

"I'm getting out my anger. About the Earth Queen's death. I didn't even _like_ her, but she deserved better – she didn't deserve to be _executed_ like a – " Korra swore. Reaching down, she seized a hunk of rubble from the ground and threw it into the wall, where it exploded.

"Korra…" Asami hesitated, and took Korra's hand in both of her own. Holding it tight, she said, "Talk to me. You seemed so calm inside."

"Of course I _seemed_ calm! Lin was there! And Lord Zuko! And my dad! I can't let them down! They're looking to me to… to…" Korra ran her free hand through her bangs. Her hand clenched into a fist. "Asami, let me _go_."

"No." Asami said. She held her hand tighter. "You're grieving. You don't have to be angry. It's okay to just be sad."

"I'm _not_ grieving! I didn't even _like_ her!" Korra looked at Asami. Their eyes met for a moment, then Korra dropped her gaze to their hands. She took a deep, shuddering breath. "You don't have creepy rich-lady fingernails."

"Thank you," Asami said flatly. She had no idea where Korra was going with this.

"You work with your hands. You make things. You made that amazing sand skimmer. I admire you so much." Tears spilled from Korra's eyes.

"Thank you," Asami said, heartfelt this time. Now she couldn't look at Korra. Her heart was pounding. She didn't let up her grip, though, and Korra went on.

"I didn't respect the Earth Queen at all. But I owed her protection. I wasn't there. I should have been there to stop them."

' _You would have gotten killed,_ ' Asami thought, but kept that to herself.

"All my life, all those years on the compound, I was so afraid that this would happen. Just like Avatar Aang, sealed up in an iceberg for a hundred years, and then the war broke out. I was so afraid every day that something would go terribly wrong in the world and it would be my fault for not being there. And now it's happened." Asami saw tears falling onto the ground between them. "I should have been there. I failed the Earth Kingdom."

Asami said nothing, but stepped forward and wrapped Korra in a hug. Korra hugged her back at once. They held each other for a moment. Korra tried to suppress a sob. Asami said, "Let it out, Korra. Let yourself feel it. You've always been good at expressing yourself. I admire you for that. It's okay to be grieving and to be angry. But you're blaming yourself for too much. It's okay, Korra. You did the best you could."

Korra sobbed. Asami held her tighter. Korra fidgeted and drew back from Asami, wiping her nose. "Thanks," she said.

"When you went into the Spirit World," Asami said, "and then when we escaped from the airship and crashed it… every step, you were sure you were making the right decision. I was there. They were the right decisions to me, too. Korra… you can talk to me. Okay?"

Korra nodded. Asami added, "Seeing you in that much pain is really scary."

She managed a weak chuckle. "You've never even seen me in the Avatar State."

"Korra?" came a voice from down the alleyway. Asami glanced that way. She started back when Korra laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you, Asami. I mean it. But I'm not letting myself off the hook. I swear the next time the world needs me, I'll be there." She turned to the person coming down the alley towards them. "Yes, Lord Zuko?"

Asami turned and bowed deeply. The old man waved a hand. "No 'Lord' necessary. If you don't mind my asking…" Zuko cleared his throat, "I'd like to speak to the Avatar, in private."

"Why?" Korra asked, defensive at once.

"I thought you might be upset over the news out of Ba Sing Se." He smiled warmly at them. "I just wanted to talk."

Asami knew it was time to bow out. "I'll meet you back in the cantina." She found Korra's hand, give it one last squeeze, and then hurried off, her back straight, her mien perfect once more. But she flexed her hands as she re-entered the cantina. She and Korra had never been so close before. As horrible as the events of the last few days had been… well, what was it that Pema liked to say about an ill wind?

Asami found their table again, and was relieved to find Lin Beifong sitting there alone. Tonraq had gone to request rooms for the night. Two fresh glasses of pomegranate ice were sitting on the table, and Asami took one and sipped greedily.

"I could feel some kind of rumble down the alley," Lin said casually. "Anything wrong?"

Asami considered tact, evasion, and wit, and decided on honesty. "Korra was upset. She blames herself for not being there in Ba Sing Se."

Lin grunted. She swirled around her half-finished ice, and said, "That'll happen."

"What, the collapse of the Earth Kingdom just happens?"

"No. I meant blaming herself. It's unreasonable, but she's got to work through it. It's the sad side effect of developing a sense of responsibility." Lin idly grazed the scars on her jaw.

"I tried to help her…" Asami said. She didn't know why she said that. Lin was not the kind to invite confidences.

"She'll be fine," Lin said. She added, "From all I've heard, _you've_ been behaving with real brains and grit on this disaster. Well-done."

Lin said nothing else before Tonraq, along with Zuko and Korra, returned, but Asami felt peculiarly honored.

000

That night was a long one. Once again, Asami and Korra roomed together. Tomorrow, they hoped, Mako and Bolin would join them. The team would be complete.

Korra fell asleep quickly – though she tossed and turned for hours.

In the darkness, Asami lay awake, exhausted beyond words, staring at the reflections of light on the ceiling.

She wished she had work to do. A Pai Sho game to play, an engine to repair, a dime novel to read. She had too much time to wonder. At the tail end of this bizarre, very long day, she kept thinking about Korra's trip into the Spirit World. Asami had never been there. The idea was frightening.

Asami remembered something that Pema had asked a long time ago.

Why had Koh decided to release Ummi's soul?

Why now?

Everyone knew the old spirits were untouched by time, and he was very old. Had something changed his mind? Was it something to do with Harmonic Convergence?

And that dream she'd had after Harmonic Convergence – that could not have been real, could it? If it was, that meant that Asami had actually been to the Spirit World. Once. By accident. In her sleep.

And that, well, that just raised _further_ questions…

Maybe Koh had actually released all of the faces, all of the souls in his care. Maybe he had repented, or just wanted to clear out his collection before the Convergence. Make room for new stock.

Whatever the truth was, how would Asami ever know?

"Oh, monkeyfeathers," Asami whispered into the darkness.

Asami hated not knowing. And she had to content herself with that. She got up, walked up and down the hallway for a bit, and lay back in her own bed, breathing slowly and deeply until she fell asleep.

In the morning, she was quite in her own mind again. She and Korra helped one another get ready, pull their things together, move out. Asami did not think about the Spirit World any more.

Until – until Lin admitted that Zaheer had taken Korra away.

Asami's first, crazy thought was that Zaheer was taking Korra into the Spirit World. But that was absurd. The Northern Spirit Portal was a hard week's flight away, and any other passage would leave their bodies behind.

But he was taking her into the physical world. Kai knew the spot. A network of canyons, a veritable natural labyrinth. The Tokhoi Valley.

Asami was astonished at how steady her hands were as she guided the airship there. There was a cave system built into the earth. Again, Asami had the absurd thought that Koh, the Face-Stealer, was lurking somewhere in those caves. But she gave herself a hard shudder. That was just a nightmare intruding into real life. She hadn't slept well and was still overtired from yesterday. She had to just focus on what was real.

The enemy was real. Asami stunned one Red Lotus guard, then another. Then, her hairpin in hand, she set to work freeing the airbenders. She worked quickly – and three hairpins broke in the process – because somewhere in these caves Korra was waiting. Anything could happen to her.

"You guys get everyone out of here. I'll search for Korra," Tonraq said.

"We're coming with you," said Mako. Asami nodded. Of course. Mako wouldn't leave without her and Bolin. They were a team.

"You don't have to search for her," came Jinora's clear voice. "I know exactly where she's being held."

Asami tried to say "Lead the way," but she was concentrating fiercely on the lock. When the lock clicked open, and she looked up –

"Where did they go?" she asked, stupidly.

"Looking for Korra," Lin replied. "Got a spare hairpin?"

Asami looked around, stunned, for a moment. Tonraq, Jinora, Bolin, and Mako were gone. They had left her behind.

' _Of course_ ,' she thought. ' _I'm not a bender_.'

She produced an extra pin for Lin, and another for Suyin. Asami shuffled over to the next lock, ignoring the whispered thanks of the airbender in front of her. An image came into her head: Herself, a little girl training for hours, alone, in her family's _kwoon_ , to protect herself. And it hadn't afforded her anything, had it? Not at all.

As Lin led the assembly out into the light, Asami wished she was a bender. She had never wished it so fervently. To be an airbender, and tear through the caves at high speed! To be an earthbender, and know where Korra was just by digging her hands into the soil! To be able to reach Korra. That would have been enough.

But that wasn't Asami's lot. She could sit and wait, hugging herself, fearing what every moment might bring. She looked every moment towards the mouth of the cave, praying every minute that she'd see…

As it turned out, that was the wrong place to look.

The earth shook, and the ground quivered under their feed. To the west, a rock face shattered. After a moment, Zaheer flew out, a bizarre sight without any visible propulsion. And then Korra came into view.

For the first time, Asami saw Korra in the Avatar State.

Asami staggered back. The sight of Korra, bending madly in sheer bloodlust and pain – Korra gone utterly _berserk_ –hurt Asami to her heart. That was Korra – _her_ Korra – but she wasn't herself, she was unrecognizable, inhuman. Her eyes burned, her frame shook. Whether this was the Avatar State's effect, or some evil work of Zaheer's, Asami didn't care. It was clear that Korra would die if she had to continue. Asami wanted it to stop – and then, in a terrible instant, it _did_ stop.

Zaheer pinned Korra in place, and he used Airbending to suck her life away.

Asami's heart tore out within her, and she realized why Koh had released Ummi.

Koh had wanted her to see the Avatar die.

In the light of this shock, Asami went limp. She could barely stand. She could only watch, and pray in desperation. The people before her seemed to shrink into puppets, marionettes acting out a play. They were unreal. Korra was very real – every breath was real, every breath could be her last. The sunlight, glaring and burning, was real. And time, every minute of it ticking away, was real.

Asami watched.

Suyin took control. She bent the metal out of Korra's body. She summoned the airship – it had been left a ways back, with a Metal Clan pilot on board. The airship appeared, and Mako set to work herding everyone to it. Bolin was the one who came to Asami and took her hand and pulled her aboard. Neither of them said anything.

Then there was a hospital. Asami didn't know and didn't care what city they were in. She sat in a waiting room, and that fog did not lift, not until Bolin found her – again – and he sat next to her and put his arms around her, just as if she was his sister.

"It'll be okay," he told her. "Korra's gonna be okay."

"I know," Asami said. She leaned into his hug. She hadn't realized how much she'd needed human contact.

"Are _you_ gonna be okay?" Bolin asked.

Asami was silent for a long time. She could feel herself waking up. Finally, she said, "I have to _do_ something."

With everything in her, she wanted to see Korra live.

000

At the hospital, she learned. She found nurses willing to teach her, paid them for their time, and learned about how to tend to a sick person. Lessons included how to help a patient change clothes and bathe, how to dose medicine and massage sore limbs; how to tend without nagging, or prodding. The head nurse warned Asami that her lessons would go on – she'd have to learn, on her own, how to be a nurse and a friend at the same time, how to care for Korra while sparing her pride.

But it turned out, Asami didn't have to worry about that last item. Korra, in her wheelchair, staring out the window of the airship with her eyes empty as scraped parchment, had no pride left to break.


	7. In which Asami tells a story

The anointing ceremony was over. Jinora was the first Airbending master in a generation. And it seemed to Asami that the windchimes had not even stilled before Korra was on a ship bound for the South Pole. Asami stood on the dock, with Mako and Bolin and Pabu, and they waved and waved until the ship was out of sight.

000

Alone in Republic City.

Asami kept herself busy. Her to-do list seemed never-ending. But she still lay awake at night. She missed Korra and wanted to know that she was happy.

Meditation continued. Work continued. Future Industries needed her oversight. She attended all the highlights of the Republic City social calendar. Mako and Bolin's extended family settled in to the mansion and its guest houses, and Asami was happy to help them adjust. Once a week she'd sail out to Air Temple Island. She would always bring a new novel for Jinora and new gossip for Ikki, and then Asami would share a cup of tea and a talk with Pema – sometimes a Pai Sho game, as well. But wherever she went, something was missing.

Then came Korra's first letter. It was a welcome surprise, if not the happy missive that Asami would have liked to read. Asami wrote back within a day, and a correspondence began.

As Asami and Korra's letters traded way over the Southern Seas, and occasionally in the pocket of an Airbender, Asami supported Korra and cheered her on with the best words she could muster. And she found that she really enjoyed letter-writing. She liked to put down her thoughts in a long, uninterrupted form, and imagine Korra's response. Then, the actual response was always richer, somehow, more _Korra_ -like than what Asami could imagine. She decided it was even better than the telephone – but couldn't compare to Korra in person.

There was still too much spare time, though. She continued her meditation, but even her best visualization and focus yielded no more dreams. So she went to the University of Zei, and bought a library pass.

The University of Zei was well-known to Asami. She had taken a several courses there in metal shop and design. She had always studied in the Sato School of Engineering and Technology – named after a generous donation of two generations past. So you could say that building was a part of the family. But the Library…

Asami strode through the Engineering section, but grew shy as she stepped into the History wing. The stacks seemed to loom around her. History was an undiscovered country, full of dust and bibliographies. She didn't know where to start, but gamely set forth.

She wandered between the bookshelves, looking for stripes of blue among the red and brown leather. A voice called her name and broke into her musings.

"Hello? Miss Sato? Asami Sato?"

Asami turned, and saw Kya, Tenzin's older sister. The taller woman bowed to her. Asami, confused, bowed quickly in return.

"Hello, Kya, I, um, didn't know you were in Republic City…"

"No one does," Kya said. "Not even my brothers. You won't tell them, will you?"

Asami shook her head.

"Good." Kya grinned. "I'm here visiting friends, and I'd like to cut back on the family drama. I'm sure you understand." Kya hefted a small stack of books in her arm. "A friend of mine is working on a new translation of an old Water Tribe sagas, and I'm here to help give her the appropriate poetic touch. And I was just heading to our reading room, when I saw you. May I ask what brings you to this branch of the library?" Asami paused, and Kya added, kindly, "Not that you need a reason."

"I _do_ have a reason," Asami said quickly. "I'm trying to find out about the life of Avatar Kuruk and Ummi. What really happened, I mean, not just the legends."

"Is that so!" Kya nodded approvingly. "Well, I'll see if my friend can't give you a hand."

"Your friend is…?"

"Only the University's specialist in Water Tribe history. C'mon, you can share our reading room."

Kya's friend, a professor named Sedna, was happy to meet Asami. With her help, Asami deciphered the catalogue and found books that were based on solid fact – historical records, transcriptions of first person accounts, and other dreadfully dry material. These texts proved that Ummi's abduction _happened_ , and was indeed an attack from the Spirit World, but they were short on detail.

As Asami piled the books she'd read onto a cart for reshelving, she commented to Kya and Sedna, "It's not really what I expected, from the greatest love story of all time."

"Greatest love story of all time?" Kya repeated, skeptical.

"Well, that's what people call them... Star-crossed and everything."

Kya shrugged. "It's dramatic, I'll grant you, but I really prefer the love stories that end with 'and they all lived happily ever after.' Getting to know one another, arguing over breakfast, building a home, growing old together - that's love."

"Yeah." Asami swallowed down a lump in her throat. "I guess."

"I'm frankly a little suspicious of love at first sight. Personal experience, you see."

"Same here," Asami agreed, thinking of herself and Mako.

"What did they talk about, I wonder? What did they have in common?"

"Both from the Water Tribe, there's that."

Kya snickered, and shook her head. "The North and the South are like saltwater and freshwater. That alone wouldn't get you too far. Did they spend all of their time talking about Kuruk's strength and Ummi's beauty? That's all that the legends say, most of the time. He was brave and strong and arrogant, and she was beautiful."

"Yeah," Asami agreed dimly.

"Now, now, Kya," Sedna said gently. "You of all people should know the treachery of legends."

Kya rolled her eyes theatrically. "Of course, just because one Avatar was my Dad…"

Sedna went on, "Maybe it would be better to say that Kuruk and Ummi were private people, and their love was their own."

"I like that idea." Asami wasn't sure how convinced she was. She held up the last book she'd read. "This said that all of Kuruk's relics are kept by the priests of Avatar Therem's shrine, at the North Pole. There's no shrine for Avatar Kuruk?"

"Avatar Therem built a handsome museum, and the priests use his shrine for relics of many of the Water Tribe's Avatars," Sedna told her.

Kya added, "We say in the South that after Kuruk dedicated his life to chasing down Koh, he was no longer the Avatar - just a hunter, a bitter man who happened to bend all four elements."

Asami had never heard that before. She wondered if one day the Southern Water Tribe would build a shrine for Avatar Korra. The thought was jarring.

"Kya," she asked as they left the library, "were you in the Southern Tribe recently?"

"Just came from there."

"Did you see Korra?"

Kya's smile was kindly and understanding. "I did. I helped Mom with some of Korra's therapy. I taught her some traditional Water Tribe dances, to help her get her coordination back. She's doing very well. And she talked about Republic City – she said _you_ had told her all about it. She must have mentioned your latest, brilliant letter twelve times."

That thought kept Asami company for a long time.

000

A day came, not too long after that, when Asami realized that it was the two-year anniversary of the day that Tenzin had begun his "past life meditation" exercise, at her suggestion.

Now, Asami thought, enough time had passed that she could tell Korra the truth, without embarrassment. In a letter. A safe, friendly letter where she wouldn't have to see Korra's bewildered or repulsed expression in person… no, she could just _imagine_ the reaction.

Maybe a letter wasn't that much better, after all.

Asami postponed the idea.

She wrote out a beautiful new missive, packed with the latest news of Republic City, full of encouragement and descriptions of the cherry blossoms in full bloom. It was a fine letter, Asami knew, but, as she read it over, she felt ashamed. It was lovely, but shallow. Korra's latest letter had been heartbreakingly earnest. She'd shared so much of her frustration and disappointment in herself, her gratitude for Katara's patience, her new understanding of Water Tribe legends. Every word had come from Korra's heart, and Asami treasured it.

For her to answer with a letter full of gossip and flower petals…

Asami cringed. ' _That's all I'm good for, in the end_ ,' she thought. ' _Prettiness and distraction..._ '

' _No,_ ' she thought. ' _If Korra shared her pain with me, she knows that I can be trusted, and I understand. If she can share that with me, then I can share this with her_.'

So she prepared another page. An addendum. It was harder to write than Asami thought. There were abundant scribbles and crossing-outs. She had to stifle and smother the voice in her head that told her she was making this all up, or that Korra would think she was making it all up, trying to get attention or make herself feel more special. That Korra would think Asami was in love with her.

It was that last idea that particularly tormented Asami. Because she wasn't sure if it was true or not.

And if it was true – if Asami's thoughts about Korra, and yearning for Korra, and hopes for Korra, were in fact the marks of love – a love that had grown out of their letters and their friendship so subtly that Asami had not consciously realized until now – if Asami really was in love with Korra, then she _certainly_ didn't want to say it like this!

Recollections of the "Past Lifetime" craze on Air Temple Island made Asami turn red. How bizarre this was. How _crazy_ she would sound. Was this worth jeopardizing what they had?

It was worth _something_ , anyway. Yasuko had once said "Things are only worth what you're willing to give up for them." And Asami's peace of mind was worth a lot. She needed to know.

Wait – that was it! Asami could phrase it as a problem, a mystery. Korra could help her. Together they could find answers.

Keeping this angle in mind, Asami finally wrote a version she was happy with. She made it as clear as could be: the past was in the past. There was a question regarding the Spirit World, and Koh the Face-Stealer, that Korra would have fun puzzling out. There was no need to be nervous; any feelings that Ummi had for Kuruk had been washed away in the Wheel of Rebirth. Asami had opened her heart to Korra, and she felt better for it.

She added this page to her letter, and posted it to the South Pole, eager for Korra's response.

000

Unbeknownst to Asami, by the time this letter reached the South Pole, Korra had already headed north, with the intention of returning to Republic City. But Korra would not enter Republic City; her own shadow flew before her, and fear barred her way. She fled east, regretting every step.

However, Korra had left instructions at the South Pole that any mail sent to her was to be posted to Republic City's Southern Water Tribe Embassy - a gesture that she'd hoped would mean she was taking back her role as the world's mediator, instead of relying on Tenzin and the young Air Nation to work for her. So Asami's letter, and the many others posted to the Avatar, bounced from the South Pole all the way back to Republic City, where the Embassy diligently piled them up, waiting for the day that Avatar Korra would claim them.

And Asami's next letter was not a response. It was a small card, with Korra's best calligraphy telling Asami to expect "a surprise." But none came.

000

It took two weeks, usually, before Asami received a reply from Korra. So before she started wondering why Korra did not reply, she started puzzling out something that Kya had said. That in every legend of Ummi (and Asami had read many iterations by now), the one word to describe her would be "beautiful." They might fail to mention she was from the Southern Tribe; they might leave out the fact that she was not a bender; they might not even give her name, but they would all say she was beautiful.

And Asami started thinking back on her own life.

Whenever her mother or father had talked about her birth, they had always added that the midwife had said Asami was the most beautiful baby they'd ever seen. Now, Asami wasn't exactly experienced with children, but she had met little Rohan, shortly after he was born. Newborn babies were… well, you just had to love them, because if you didn't love them, they looked like red, scrawny, screaming turtles. How Asami, as a newborn, could have possibly been considered aesthetically appealing was beyond even her imagination.

As far back as Asami could remember, people had told her she was pretty. She hadn't thought much of it at the time. She vaguely assumed that all little girls heard that they were pretty, and anyway she preferred to hear how much she looked like her mother. But when put in present context, with ample time to reflect, Asami was amazed by what she remembered. Her grandmother – may she rest in peace – had said that Asami would break hearts one day – and Asami couldn't have been older than five.

"Who talks like that to a five-year-old child?" Asami asked the empty air. She had to get up and pour herself a strong drink while she contemplated the question.

Now that she was grown up, she was considered "a beauty" among Republic City socialites – not the most beautiful woman in the world, by any means, but enough that whenever the papers mentioned her, her name was almost always presaged by the word "stunning" or "glamorous" or something similar – never "leader in world industry" or "hard-working" or even "very good Pai Sho player."

Oh, it was all so _stupid_. Thinking about it was enough to send her into her _kwoon_ , to spar and run through the basic fighting forms she'd learned so long ago.

Alone she practiced; alone she went to bed and headed out in the morning for another day's work. Alone, alone, alone.

000

Weeks turned into months. Asami told herself that Korra's reply – or maybe Asami's letter – had just been waylaid. One or two letters had been lost in their communication before; it was nothing to worry about.

But Asami had too much spare time, so of course she worried. She had plenty of work to do, so she focused on that – Asami had always been one to work out her feelings by doing something. She kept up her reading at the University of Zei, reading more about Water Tribe history and philosophy. And she kept up her weekly visits to Air Temple Island.

One autumn day, when Asami stayed at Air Temple Island for dinner, a sudden storm blew up over Yue Bay. Pema would not hear of Asami trying to sail her little motorboat back in that weather, but insisted that she stay the night.

"I don't mean to impose…" Asami said.

"You're not imposing at all!" Pema said. "You've stayed here often enough before. Just make yourself at home."

"Want to sit in the front room and listen to the storm?" Jinora asked, pulling at Asami's sleeve. "It's our tradition."

"I should really help your mother…" Asami started, only to be interrupted. Tenzin helped Pema clear the table, and Pema all but shooed Asami into the front room. "Maybe Asami can tell you a story," she added to the little ones.

Well, then it was almost like a magic spell. No sooner had they entered the front room than they were all begging for a story. Ikki managed to get even little Rohan to chant "Story! Story!" Jinora contented herself with only one wheedle and a "Please?"

"Okay, okay!" Asami said, letting them pull her to the window seat. They settled in – Jinora fetched some blankets –and although the shutters were drawn, the wind and the sea made a symphony of sound, battering, pulling, and moaning. The noise wasn't scary – it was a little thrilling, even, as long as you had the good luck to be inside, warm, and cozy.

Asami settled herself in. "What kind of story do you want to hear?"

"Tell us about a past Avatar!" Ikki cried, before any of her siblings had a chance to talk. "A Water Tribe Avatar!"

"Oh? That's a strange request," Asami said.

"I miss Korra _so much_ ," was Ikki's sad reply. "And we never get letters from her."

"I miss Korra, too," Asami said.

"So… I just started wondering… Who was the Water Tribe Avatar before her?"

Jinora answered before Asami could. "That was Avatar Kuruk. I know Dad's told us about him a dozen times."

"Well, he did, but I wasn't listening."

Asami laughed, and asked, "Does everyone else want to hear about Avatar Kuruk?" She knew there was a great old yarn about him fighting a typhoon… now that she thought about it, it would be the perfect story for a stormy night…

There was a chorus of Yes's, and then Jinora surprised Asami by asking, "Didn't he lose his one true love?"

Asami could not answer for a moment. Jinora was always one for the odd questions. But, Asami remembered, ever since Jinora had met Kai, she had asked many more questions about love and heartbreak. Asami had not pried then, and she did not pry now. She drew her blanket around her, and said, "He did. Yes."

"Oh! Tell us that story!" Ikki cried, and Meelo clutched Asami's arm, saying, "I bet it's gruesome and awful!"

Asami closed her eyes, and for a moment she was not in Air Temple Island's front room. She was in the den of her own home. She was six years old, and her father was telling her an old folktale. After all the years, all the scar tissue around her love, she found herself remembering him. She let herself miss him, regret the child that she was and the father she had had. The only way she could remember these words were if she let her heart hurt again. And these were the right words. After all the versions of the myth that she had read, the way she had first heard it seemed best.

"Kuruk was an Avatar of the Water Tribe, like Korra… except he came from the North. Just like Korra, he was strong and brave, but he was always proud and boastful. Thanks to Yangchen's wisdom, he lived in an era of peace…"

And the words began to flow. None of the children cried, but they did stare as Asami took them to the North Pole, to the ill-starred wedding, and to the darkest reaches of the Spirit World. Even all these years later, she made her face completely still as she spoke about Koh, the Face-Stealer.

"Once every year after that, Kuruk would return to the Spirit Oasis, and dive into the Spirit World. He would hunt Koh and try to rescue Ummi."

"Did he ever rescue her?" Ikki asked. It was her first question since Asami had begun.

Asami looked around at them. Rohan was asleep, Meelo was fidgeting, but Ikki was attentive. Jinora was hanging back, her expression thoughtful. Asami remembered the strange vision and the white river, and said, "He died without ever finding her. And Kyoshi said that he continued to search even after death, in the Spirit World."

"Ummi must have been so scared," Ikki said. "So scared and lonely in the Spirit World."

"I wonder if she was mad at him," Jinora said. "I mean, if she hadn't married Kuruk, Koh would never have noticed her. Maybe she blamed him for being kidnapped."

"Jinora! That's crazy!" Ikki said. Rohan woke up from his nap. "Ummi loved him! She wanted to marry him and have kids and things! She wouldn't be _mad_ at him."

Jinora tossed her hair and said, "You know _nothing_ about love," with all the wisdom of fourteen years old.

"Oh, you think you know everything!" Ikki said.

Now the peacemaker, Asami took Ikki's hand, and made eye contact with Jinora, and said, "Love can be strange, sometimes."

"How do you think Ummi felt?" Ikki demanded. Meelo finally reached his apogee of boredom, and betook himself to the fireplace, to rifle among his toys. "She wasn't mad at him, was she?"

Asami thought a long while before answering. "I think that she loved Kuruk. I have no doubt about that. But when she was kidnapped, maybe she felt mad at him. Jinora makes a good point. It's not very logical, but love rarely is. The thing is…" She closed her eyes. "Being angry at someone doesn't mean that you don't love them. And I think that Ummi realized that Kuruk was doing his best to rescue her. What had happened to her wasn't his fault… and I think she loved him, all the time. She would be happy to see him again."

Ikki seemed satisfied, and Jinora turned away, lost in thought again.

"I bet he found her," Ikki said, confident that the world was basically just. "I bet they're together right now, living real happily ever after… laughing in a cottage by the sea." She leaned against Asami.

"A sea in the Spirit World?" Asami asked.

"There are a few," Jinora said. "I'm surprised you even remember that," she added to her sister.

"Of course I remember the sea! One day I'm going to swim in it…"

Asami smiled down at the little girl, then a stray noise made her look up. Pema was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Asami didn't know how much the older woman had heard. But as Pema entered the front room, followed by her husband, Asami could almost reach out and touch the welcome and love that they extended to her.

"Would you like to hear the story of when Avatar Kuruk fought the Great Typhoon?" Asami asked. Meelo hurrahed and piled in close. Asami started to tell the story. Together, they waited out the storm.

000

When Asami returned home the next day, she saw that her housekeeper had set aside a special letter on the kitchen table. Asami, thinking it was from Korra, ran to it and picked it up.

But it was not from Korra. It was from the Republic City First Municipal Prison, and it bore her father's handwriting.

If Asami had been a firebender, she probably would have sent the little paper up in smoke that very moment. But instead, she scowled at it, and, marching upstairs, threw it on the desk of what had been her father's office. More letters would follow, and gather on the desktop. But Asami still had months to go before she heard from Korra.


	8. In which Asami meets the past

The letters from Hiroshi Sato piled up. Over the weeks to come, they piled up, sometimes one every other day. The sight of them enraged Asami. She instructed her housekeeper to place the letters on the desk. She shut the door to her father's old office. She turned her head away from the door when she walked by it, but still she could see the letters. They weighed on her – on her conscience? On her heart? On her memory? She did not care.

One day, she gave in. She reentered the office, forced the letters into a sack, and prepared to drive down to the First Municipal Prison.

As she drove, her quick and treacherous imagination wondered what was in the letters. Maybe he was begging for forgiveness. Maybe he was begging for release. Maybe he was explaining himself. Maybe he had written a proto-memoir. Maybe the letters held memories of Yasuko…

Asami clenched her jaw, and, speeding up, changed lanes on the highway with more venom than was strictly safe. She didn't want his letters. She didn't _care_ what was in them. She did not care, did not care, _did not care_.

She held herself straight when she marched into the meeting room. She sat at the table as if it were any boardroom. She waited, and didn't realize how tense she was until she almost leapt at the sound of the door opening.

She looked up, and almost didn't recognize the man flanked by two guards. Hiroshi Sato. He looked shrunken, exhausted. He looked so _old_.

Asami didn't care. She barely even heard his greeting. "I came to return these," she said. She knew how cold her voice sounded, and she didn't care. She pushed the letters back to him.

He looked down, and the man actually had the audacity to look disappointed. "You never opened them."

"Stop writing me," Asami said. "I never want to see or hear from you ever again." She stood up. There, the scene was over. The role of the furious daughter was played out. Now it was time for her to leave, slam the door, drop curtain, on to the next.

" _Please_ ," said the man, "just let me say one thing, then I'll never contact you again."

Asami hesitated. She could not remember ever having heard him beg before.

She thought, ' _Never is an awful long time_.'

She almost could remember what 'never' would feel like. A stretching abyss of silence. A world of words locked up. An endless litany of _if only, if only_. How much would Ummi have given for even one word to Kuruk?

Asami cursed her own imagination. That was a cheap shot. But it hit home.

Asami sat down again.

Hiroshi Sato said, "I can't forgive myself for all the horrible things I've done. And I never expect you to forgive me. I tore our family apart, and destroyed our good name. But in a life of regret, you're the one thing I look back on that makes me smile. I just want you to know I'm so proud of you, Asami. You are the greatest thing I ever created."

' _You alone did not create me. I am not a 'thing,''_ was her first, vicious thought. But, even in her anger, she couldn't stop herself from hearing him. His bitter regret, his guilt. His pride in her, his little girl, his daughter with Yasuko. His respect for her, for the woman she had made of herself. And his love for her –the apple of his eye, the treasure of his heart, the daughter he might never see again.

Asami wished her heart could stop breaking. She didn't trust herself to words. Tears ran from her eyes. She couldn't bear it, showing so much in front of him. She got to her feet and nearly fled the room, all decorum abandoned. She hurried through the prison parking lot in a daze; she managed to start the car and drive out safely. She shifted onto the highway. Desperate to occupy her mind, she fumbled for the radio – only to activate the windshield wipers.

She started to laugh. This had happened before, years ago, on an early driving lesson with Dad.

Dad.

Asami started to cry.

Her father had been so _old_. How could he have aged so much in just four years? Why wasn't he trying? Why didn't he seem to want to live? How could he have said those things?

Why did he still have the power to hurt her so much?

Asami wept. Her hands, feet, and eyes drove as if automatically, but with all that was left over, she sobbed and sobbed. She screamed into the silence of the car. She cursed Dad for contacting her and turning upside down the peace she'd made with her life; she cursed Mom for having died and left them alone. Now and again she would brake to a stop in the slow highway traffic, wondering if any other driver would see her and notice her distress. But if anyone did, Asami didn't see. And some inconsequential thought would send her bawling again.

Eventually her grief subsided; it stopped tearing its way out of her and returned to the dull ache in her heart she had almost gotten used to. By the time she reached home again she knew her face was red and swollen from crying; her hair was disheveled, her voice was raw, and she was shaking as she parked the car. She sat in the garage for a moment, too tired to even decide where to go.

She wanted to go to the gardens, but her guests would probably be strolling there. Mako and Bolin's family from Ba Sing Se. Though they had integrated well into Republic City, they still shared her estate, permanent guests that she enjoyed having around, she really did, but… Spirits and seas, how could she feel lonely even when surrounded by people? How was it possible to want to be alone but also want to be comforted? What was wrong with her?

She missed Korra.

Asami curled on herself and wished that Korra were here to listen to her, to offer advice, to hold her and say it was all going to be okay.

Asami left her car and went to her room. She washed her face and dug up an old project to work on. So what if she had just said goodbye to her father, possibly forever, and sobbed the entire way home. Come to think of it, that had been not only a show of weakness, but a very unsafe way to drive. Best not to make a habit of it. Chin up, old girl, the world keeps spinning and you'll feel better about it tomorrow.

The next day, Asami did not feel better. She took lunch in Avatar Korra Park, facing the statue of Korra. It had become a habit. She had enjoyed it, over the past few months, looking at the statue from a distance and remembering her friend. But now it seemed like sheer masochism. All these months of no news at all… and where had Korra finally turned up? The Foggy Swamp. Some surprise…

Asami looked away from the statue, and started to eat her lunch as quickly as was decent. But then she saw a little girl and her father, playing Pai Sho on one of the park boards. The girl was bent with serious concentration over the board; the father was simply watching her with a beaming, proud smile.

Asami watched them for a while, and it took her some time to realize what she was feeling was longing.

She stood up and walked around the park.

The Water Tribe philosophers she had been reading said that forgiveness, if possible, was an important key to healing. But some wrongs could never be forgiven.

Never was an awful long time.

She passed by the father and daughter – now happily eating ice creams– and smiled at them. She reached the Fountain of the Moon, and reached into her pocket for some pennies.

She looked into the water, and almost jumped at her own reflection. In the flickering, shallow little pool, she thought she had seen Yasuko.

Asami looked again. There, it was her reflection, it was only herself – but she had never seen the resemblance so clearly before.

What would Yasuko say?

Asami stood there in thought for a long time, while the crowds passed around her and the town clock tolled.

"You've got to be kind," Asami said out loud.

In her gloved hand, three coins sat warm and gleaming. She tossed them into the pool. "Better luck by next full moon," she said to the bas-relief carving of a beautiful princess over the water. Then she turned and walked away.

000

Asami returned to the First Municipal Prison. This time, when her father entered, she could meet his eyes.

"You came back," he said.

She cleared her throat. This time, she allowed herself her confusing mix of fear, sadness, and hope. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled. "When I first came here," she began, "it was because I wanted to tell you face to face that I never wanted to see or hear from you again. I wanted my words to hurt you, so that you would know how you hurt me."

"I'm sorry," said her father, quickly, as if he knew how inadequate the phrase was.

"But when I saw you, it wasn't anger I felt. It was sadness. You tainted our past and destroyed our future together."

"I want to make amends." She knew he would say that. He wouldn't be her father if he didn't strive to change things.

Now came the hard part. Asami blinked back tears as she reached into her bag. "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive you… But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try."

She found the little Pai Sho board and pulled it out. Such a simple thing, made of maple and paint. But in the sunlit visiting room, it gleamed like a promise. The greatest sculptures of the Republic City Museum couldn't compare. "I thought we could play some Pai Sho. Like we used to."

Hiroshi smiled. "Nothing ... would make me happier."

Soon, the tiles were all in place and the game was underway. They played in silence, the movement of tiles substituting for words. It had been a long time since Asami had gone up against a player as skilled as Hiroshi. But now, for the first time, she felt like she could meet his level. Since the last time they played, she had traveled far and wide, and learned so much about the world. The strengths and weaknesses of each element came clear to her - and more than that, she could understand how each element was a necessary part of creating a beautiful, balanced whole, a triumph quite separate from anything as simple as victory.

As her mother had once said, there was winning, and then there was _winning_.

But there was still a lot she had to learn.

She broke the silence by cursing when her father captured her fire lotus. She had gambled on a risk that could pay off spectacularly, but hoped madly that he wouldn't notice the opening. He had – and he'd taken it.

Hiroshi smothered a laugh with his hand. "Where did you learn to swear like that?"

Asami felt herself turning red. She kept a demure silence – or tried to.

That reminded her… she looked at the Water quarter, and realized she still had a Priestess tile, sitting meek and mild – and subtly dangerous – on the Outer Ring. The game was salvageable yet.

She took the Priestess tile under her fingers and moved it four squares to the East. She saw her father's smile out of the corner of her eye. And Asami, in the walls of the prison, felt peaceful.

000

The next day was Asami's weekly visit to Air Temple Island. She had telephoned the Island the other day, and told Pema about her plans to meet with her father again. Now it was time to fill Pema in on the most recent news. But Pema surprised Asami first. She met Asami at the pier and said, as Asami was getting out of her boat, "Korra will be in Republic City in two days."

" _What_?" Asami lost her balance, toppled, and just barely caught herself – with Pema's help – before toppling into the water. Straightened up on the pier, she asked again, "What do you mean, Korra will be here? Two days? Is she okay? Just the other day you said she was in the swamp!"

"She was," Pema agreed. "Yesterday she decided the most important thing for her to do was to go to Zaofu and try to fight Kuvira."

Kuvira. The Great Uniter. Asami grew cold. "I haven't heard about Korra meeting her—"

"It was only this afternoon. Tenzin's trying not to let it leak to the press."

"Korra won, then?"

"No. Kuvira defeated her."

" _How_?" Asami asked. No one could defeat the Avatar. The Avatar was a force of nature – _the_ force of nature. Even the Red Lotus had needed to resort to cheats and poisons. The Avatar State – there was nothing that could stand against that.

Pema's eyes were sorrowful. "Korra's not the same person she was before," she said.

"But – but – how?"

"I don't know. I'll tell you everything I've learned, but first… Mako called, he's trying to get in touch with you. I think he has a mind to arrange lunch for you, Korra, himself, and that Prince Wu fellow."

"Fantastic. Hey…" Asami looked up, as Pema led her into the living quarters of the temple, away from the kitchen, where they usually took tea. "Where are we going?"

"To the study. We got our most recent letter from Gran-Gran – sorry, I mean Katara – yesterday. And there's a message to you."

If Asami thought she had been floored by the previous news about Korra… "For me?"

"Surprising, I know." Pema led her into a cluttered study. She reached inro the apparent chaos and found the letter at once. "Here."

Asami took the letter and unfolded it under the lamp. She skimmed the words - catching a stray phrase here and there, lines about Kuvira, the Earth Kingdom…

"Ah, the relevant passage is…" Pema pointed.

"Sorry…" She murmured.

" _To Miss Sato –_

 _I know we're practically strangers, but I think you'll understand my reasons for writing. I know Korra will find her way to Republic City soon, and when she does, she will need your support. Korra has told me so much about you; you give her strength and comfort. You help her to remember the best of herself. My brilliant and brave student._

 _I have every confidence in her to lead the world to balance, but I think she has lost hope in herself. As my husband was fond of saying, it is in our darkest hours that we are open to the greatest change._

 _She will find her way again, but she will need your help. The love you two share is a powerful, healing force - and I know a lot about that. Thank you, Asami."_

When Asami looked up from the letter, Pema said, "I hope you don't mind that Tenzin and I already read that. And so did Jinora… Ikki probably snuck in here and read it, too… would it interest Meelo, I don't know, but we couldn't stop him if he wanted to read it…"

"It's okay," Asami said, feeling oddly floaty and detached. "There was nothing too personal in it."

"She refers to you as a healer. That's a great honor, coming from her."

Asami could only nod. Katara was the world's greatest healer. She was also a warrior, a diplomat, and an untiring, compassionate activist. She had been the love of Avatar Aang's life - and she was the first and foremost among Avatar Korra's teachers. Asami felt so tangibly _honored_ she was blushing.

"It's good advice," she stammered. "I'll definitely take it to heart, when I see Korra again. But… _healing_... I'm no kind of a healer…"

"You healed Republic City after it was attacked by Spirit Vines," said Pema. "I believe I heard the Mayor congratulate you on that just the other day, on the radio."

"That was a collaborative effort… if I was a healer, would I have taken four years to reach out to my father?"

"You needed to heal your own heart. In your own good time. And Asami, I'm very proud of you for attempting that… I just want you to know that, whatever happens, you have a family here, too."

Tears sprang to Asami's eyes. She wiped them away, managed to hiccup a thank you, and then hugged Pema tightly.

"Pema?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you so much for listening to me."

"Oh, Asami, it's always a delight. Thank _you_. Now, come on, I'll put on the kettle."

000

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting long…"

That was her voice. Korra's voice. Asami looked up and saw her.

"Only three years," Asami said, getting to her feet, a bit unsteady for once. She and Korra hugged, and held each other tight. When they broke apart, Asami could only look at her, and couldn't think of anything to say – could think of too many things to say – and finally settled on the truest, simplest thing: "It's good to see you again."

Then it was Asami, and Korra, and Mako, just like old times. And it would have been perfect if Bolin had been there, too, but instead there was Prince Wu. Wu. Asami had never known anyone quite like him for wrecking conversational dynamics.

Maybe Wu was the reason why things went bad so quickly. Or maybe Asami was nervous, because after all this time, she still didn't know what Korra thought of that last letter. But it was barely fifteen minutes after they sat down before…

Asami cleared her throat. "I kind of have some big news. I went to visit my father for the first time. He had been writing me letters and I guess I finally felt ready to try and forgive him." She met Korra's eyes, thinking that Korra would smile and agree, but –

"You sure you can trust him?" Korra asked, suspicion in her tone. "He might just be manipulating you again."

"You think I don't know what my _own father_ is capable of?" Asami demanded.

"No, I didn't mean…"

Logically, Asami knew that of course Korra didn't mean that. Korra hadn't been there for Asami's most recent epiphanies and changes of heart. There had been no letters. But that, of course, was just another reason for Asami to be mad. "You don't get to disappear for three years and then act like you know what's best for me!"

"It's not like I planned to be gone for that long, I wanted to come back, but I never felt ready until now!" Korra replied, and right then was when Wu decided to leap and offer far more information that Asami cared to know. Great. Everything was screwed up. Asami was angry, Wu was self-centered, Mako was irritated with all three of them, and Korra was slumping over her drink, clearly strained even by this small interaction.

Asami ran a hand through her hair. This was _not_ how she had envisioned their first meeting after all these years.

' _After five hundred years, waiting for you to rescue me_ …' thought an errant, dreaming part of her mind. Asami squished that thought without remorse. It was almost a relief to realize, a few moments later, that something was wrong, and that they could chase something instead of glaring at one another.

And to think, Asami reflected as she ran for her blue roadster, she'd looked forward to a nice, relaxing luncheon.

"Get in!" she called to Korra, who leapt beside her, all tension forgotten. Asami didn't dare spare a glance at Korra – the chase was too intense – but she felt weirdly gleeful at being next to her again.

Later, when they'd rescued Wu, Korra took the words right out of Asami's thoughts, saying "There's no place else I'd rather be."

Over the sunset-drenched riverbed, their eyes met.

They returned to Asami's home, there to be greeted by Mako's family and relax with a much simpler, home-cooked meal of soup dumplings, provided by Cousin Ginseng, who said it was "perfect for comforting the soul after a harrowing adventure." And she was right.

Wu sat in a corner and enjoyed the admiration. Mako relaxed, confident in the knowledge that with a dozen family members watching Wu's every movement, the prince was certainly well guarded. Asami and Korra took a window seat overlooking the estate, and Asami finally got to ask Korra the question that had been tormenting her.

"Korra – did you get my last letter?"

Korra paused, a dumpling halfway to her mouth. "Um." Soup began to drip, and Korra put it down. "Wait, wait, I know I read it, but – it was the one with – yes! I remember now! It was the letter about the new museum wing! Right?"

Asami stared. That had been the second-to-last letter she had posted. So, Asami's heartfelt, careful confession about her dreams of being Ummi… Korra hadn't read that at all.

"I sent you another one," Asami said flatly.

"It must have arrived after I left," Korra said, her eyes widening. She stared out at the scenery. "And I told my parents to send my mail to the Southern Tribe Embassy here in Republic City…"

"It's at the _Embassy_?" Asami repeated.

"All of my mail is there – and I haven't even checked in to say hi – oh _man_ ," Korra slapped her forehead, "I haven't checked my mail in a hundred years!"

Asami gave her a mock-scowl. Korra grinned apologetically. "I'm really sorry, Asami," she said. "Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, I'll get to the Embassy, and…"

"Will you write back?" Asami asked. "I've been looking forward to a response."

Korra laughed, and the sight was beyond welcome, to Asami's eyes. "I'll write a response – and deliver it in person. Deal?"

"Deal."


	9. In which Asami plays Pai Sho

A/N: Sorry about the delay, loyal readers! This chapter kept growing and growing, and so I decided to split it into two. Thank you for waiting - see you next week!

A sunny day in the park. Families played, friends laughed, lovers strolled, lost in one another's eyes.

Asami, alone, walked slowly around the edge of a pond. Three hours ago, President Raiko had all but ordered her to work with Varrick – that no-good, slippery, silver-tongued _warmonger_. Genius though he was, generous though he was with the information about Kuvira's superweapon… Asami was not looking forward to working with him. After four hours trying to concoct a defense, and making no headway, Asami had called a break and gone for a walk in Republic City Park. She did her best thinking alone.

There was a sunlit pond in the southern corner of the park. Birds and insects flew around, their humming and song a welcome reprieve from human chatter. A perfect place to think. And here was a Pai Sho board, and two metal chairs.

Asami, when she reached the board, looked around to be sure she was alone. The tiles would be waiting in a drawer beneath the table. Asami knelt down and retrieved them. She was going to start a rather peculiar game. One side would play Earth… yes… and the other would play… she'd get to that in a minute.

As she laid the tiles on the board, she tried to wrap her head around the idea of war. War in her own city, something miles away from the guerilla tactics used by the Equalists. Asami wished she could deny it, disbelieve it. But she was too practiced in seeing the facts. Kuvira's army was real. It drew nearer every day. And Asami's city needed her.

Asami sat on the Earth side of the board, and tried to think like Kuvira. She arranged the tiles like little regiments.

Of course, Kuvira's greatest weapon was her willpower. From all that Asami had heard, Kuvira would never give up, ever. Set that willpower in one direction, and she would reach it, no matter how long it took. And the weapon… Varrick had described it as a huge cannon, something with firepower on a level unheard of in military history. It was powered by Spirit Vines – and anything with the word "Spirit" in front of it was liable to go haywire. Asami knew by experience.

Okay, then. How to represent Kuvira and her weapon?

Asami, after some thought, stacked three tiles on top of each other. The cedar tortoise – slow but never-yielding –the fire dragon – immense force – and the shadow wind – trickery and reversals. Now, what form would it take?

A huge cannon. Probably mounted on wheels. A tank? Probably. Could it come by ship? Very unlikely. Flight? Forget about it. Earthbound it would be. Slow to move, slow to power up. Large, slow, and strong. So… how could you counter it…

Asami got up and sat down again on the opposite side of the board.

If you can't match your opponent in one area, counter them in another. Where are they weak?

Large, slow, and strong… the force of Earth. What was its best counter?

She pulled out the tiles and arranged them in the Air formation. Air was a tricky element, but good for improvisers and those who played defensively.

The opposite of large, slow, and strong… small, fast, and weak. Weak was a problem, but, when you thought about it… There was only _one_ Spirit Cannon. Couldn't be replicated. But make, say, ten or twenty molds of a small-fast-weak weapon, arrange them around the large-fast-slow…

Asami piled up the weaker tiles, the lesser tiles. They surrounded the tortoise-dragon-shadow monstrosity. The green archer, the fire dancer, the infant dragon, the sparrowhawk, and more. Yes… _yes_.

"Miss Sato, you're pretty smart after all," she said smiling as she looked over the child's battle plan she'd conjured up.

A _shoom… shoom_ sound whisked at her ears. Asami turned and saw a dragonfly-hummingbird skim over the surface of the pond. The little critter hovered in one spot a while, appearing to gossip with its own reflection, then it alighted again, trembling in space. It darted to one waterlily, then another, and then it soared over Asami's head and was gone.

Asami thought for a long minute, a smile spreading across her face. Her small-fast-weak weapon took shape.

She put away the Pai Sho tiles, but they shone bright in her memory. She left the park, but took the long way. She passed the Fountain of the Moon and threw in five whole yuan coins, as a thank-you to the universe.

000

Dinner at Air Temple Island. Asami smelled something garlicky and cabbagey as soon as she arrived. After greeting Pema and her family, she ventured into the family kitchen, hoping that she might find her… and she did. Korra was standing at the oven, cooking, and intent on her work. She didn't even notice Asami entering.

Asami didn't say anything. She just leaned against the door, watching her. Korra was here. After all those months of loneliness and longing, Korra was _here_. She was thinner, yes, diminished by her suffering. But she was here. Asami was so glad to just see her. She wanted more… wanted something more so badly… comfort, conversation, reminiscences…

The letter. The memory of the letter cut its way into Asami's thoughts. She sat up straighter. Had Korra read it yet? What did she think?

Korra turned at that moment, saw Asami, and jumped. "Asami! I didn't see you there…"

"Hey, Korra," Asami said. What was with that reaction?

Korra's next actions were even stranger. "It's great to see you," she said, leaning heavily over the stove. She looked utterly defeated.

"What's the matter?" Asami asked. Then, her heart sinking, "You read my letter."

Korra nodded. "Yes. I read it. I'm working on my response," she added quickly. "It's just a lot to take in, you know? On top of everything."

Asami's hands clenched into fists. "Well, I hadn't thought that 'everything' would come up when I wrote the letter _seven months ago_."

"I get why you're mad. I definitely see why this is something you wanted me to read right away."

"Yes!" Asami cried out. "I waited so long for a response, and I didn't hear from you, and…" an Air Acolyte entered the kitchen, and Asami froze up. The woman waved at Korra - "Smells real good!" - and walked out.

"Asami," Korra said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the delay." She took a step forward.

"Do you believe me?" Asami asked. "Do you believe me when I say…" she couldn't finish. It was all so much, she realized, all so absurd.

But Korra nodded, her blue eyes never leaving Asami's face. "I do."

Asami stood up straight. "Really?"

"Yes. Asami, you've always been straightforward with me. And... " she braced herself and closed her eyes again, "after I read the letter, I had a dream…"

At that moment, Ikki and Meelo burst into the kitchen, chasing one another in a chaotic game of tag. They spun in and out in a flurry of wind and shouting - and when they were gone, little Rohan toddled in. He was crying because his siblings were always leaving him behind. He fell on the floor, wailing, in the depths of despair.

Asami picked Rohan up and sat on the floor with him. He'd always liked her, and he loved cuddling. "Hey, it's me, it's Sami, hello!" She looked up at Korra. "You said you had a dream?"

"Yeah, a dream about Kuruk-" Rohan wailed, then, and Asami tried to comfort him. "There there, sugarplum, they'll come back… um, tell me about your dream," she added to Korra. She usually was good at multitasking…

"No, Asami, you don't understand, it was really frightening…"

"Why?"

And at that moment, Pema entered, looking for Rohan. "There you are! Oh, Asami, thank you so much for getting him. Oh, he's got such a big heart, my little man, and his brother and sisters…" She picked him up, and Asami was about to suggest to Korra that they seek a more private place to talk when Pema said, "Is something burning?" and Korra yelped, "My cabbages!"

"It can be salvaged, Korra… Why don't you sit in the dining room, Asami?" Pema added to her.

Asami sat in the dining room. She Tenzin when he walked by. He greeted her and started to talk about Republic City's defenses against Kuvira, and Asami began to seriously wonder if she was being haunted by some kind of evil spirit of interruption.

The doorbell rang. "Moooom!" Jinora called. "It's Aunt Kya, she's brought a friend for dinner!"

Asami buried her face in her hands. It had become that kind of a day.

"Er… are you quite all right, Asami?" Tenzin said. Then, "Pema, dear, I think the stress is getting to Asami." He got up and moved away, and someone else came in and sat down next to her.

"Hey." Asami lifted her head. Korra was beside her. "Asami, I do believe you. Every word you wrote."

Asami stared at her. She nodded.

"I've got so many things to say in response… I promise you, that letter is still coming your way. Is that… is that okay with you? I know it's not perfect, but..."

"It's okay," Asami said. She wiped at her eyes. "I can wait for the longer response." And, she realized, she could. She knew enough to keep going. She added, "You don't think I'm crazy, and that counts for a lot."

Korra chuckled. "If one of us is crazy, it's not you, trust me."

Asami shook her head. Korra got to her knees, and hesitated. She hastily put an arm around Asami's shoulders and kissed her forehead, right at her hairline. Then she got to her feet, coughed, "Sorry," and hurried back to the kitchen to begin serving dinner. Asami stayed where she was, prickled and shocked from head to toe. She smoothed back her hair and stared after where Korra had gone. She could have melted. She could sung. She could have laughed.

Instead, when Kya greeted her, she said hello, and concealed her maelstrom of feelings. Kya had brought Professor Sedna, who was preparing to evacuate the city along with a coterie of University students. They sat together when dinner was served. It was a loud dinner – Sedna talking about sea routes to the Fire Nation – Bumi was trading jokes with Kai - Jinora and Ikki, Meelo and sniffling Rohan, Pema and Tenzin, comfortable with their old marriage. And Korra, sitting down the table from Asami. Asami stared at her, and still felt that kiss on her forehead, like a lightning brush. And when she looked down at her food, she knew Korra was staring right back.

She knew enough to go on, for now. A fuller response was coming. Something amazing was coming just around the corner, if Asami could only hold on long enough

000

In years to come Asami would remember this time in fragments. The City needed her every spare moment. She worked on little sleep and a lot of caffeine. Memory would remain in little flickers, like still frames from a mover reel.

She visited the biology department of Zei University. There she studied dragonfly-hummingbirds and how their wings could whir so fast and hold them aloft. The next question: how to recreate that natural miracle.

Working with Varrick. Genius though he was, Varrick's mood was downright foul. It must have been something to do with Zhu Li. What _was_ it with the Water Tribe and their thwarted loves? Varrick wore his heartbreak like a tundra-hedgehog coat, all prickly and cold.

Late nights at Future Industries. The sounds of blowtorches, bandsaws, and drills all day and now into the night. The fuels with their hideous stenches. A single lightbulb hung over the table. Clusters of papers covered with markings. The prototypes taking shape, achingly slowly.

Asami woke up from a dream she'd had that the army had come, and the drums of war were sounding in her home, in her garden. She'd stumbled out of bed and started to get dressed before realizing the night was quiet and peaceful.

She had that dream again the next night. And the night after that. Each time, the drums were louder.

The hummingbirds suits weren't ready. They would never be ready. Of course they would be ready. Small-weak-fast defeats large-strong-slow. Asami hadn't played Pai Sho so diligently for so many years to fail now.

000

The game did not go as planned. Kuvira invaded Republic City a week early. She had not mounted her weapon on a ship, nor an airship, nor on a tank. She had built an enormous mecha out of platinum – where had she even _mined_ that much platinum? – and would take Republic City on foot. On feet the size of city blocks.

Asami hated Kuvira just for that. Her opponent had _cheated_ at the game.

Things moved quickly, now. Asami did her best to pay attention.

As they tied up the unconscious Bataar and prepared to interrogate him, Asami waited, on the other side of the warehouse, besides Bolin. They both stood silent, watching Korra. Frustratingly, it was hard to hear. The footsteps of the Colossus would sound like a distant explosion, drawing nearer and nearer. Other airbenders were muttering to one another. Right behind Asami it sounded like some very passionate whispering was going on. Add on top of all this, that warehouses are not built to conduct sound. Tenzin, Suyin, Korra, and a few others were clustered around the still unconscious form of Bataar Jr. Asami kept her eyes fixed on them.

Suyin Beifong leaned backwards on one heel, said - if Asami heard right - "just like Mom used to do" - and then tilted forward. A tremor rocked through Bataar's chair, and he awoke with a start. Asami strained her ears, but couldn't hear what they were saying. Would the airbenders around her just _shut up_?

They shut up when Korra lifted Bataar into the air, chair and all, with one hand. The glow of the Avatar State flashed from her eyes. Asami tensed, remembering that berserk rage. But instead of following through, Korra let it fall. Asami was proud of her, so proud she could burst.

She could hear Bataar's tone, heavy with derision. ' _She's strong enough not to destroy you_ ,' Asami thought in his direction. ' _Count yourself lucky_.'

Suyin stepped forward, attempted to barter with her son. Asami half pitied both of them. She'd shared Bataar's conviction, once. She could understand his adamant refusal to engage with the parent who had wronged him. It was just that, well, Asami had been right and Bataar Jr. was wrong. Simple, right?

Asami shook her head. There was something even stickier in this situation. Bataar wasn't even really thinking for himself, was he? He had just traded in his filial piety for devotion to his future wife. As soon as Asami thought that, Bataar coincidentally confirmed it, saying " _Kuvira_ is my family now," loudly enough to carry across the room.

How strange.

Asami noticed that Korra was staring at her.

She met Korra's eyes, and Korra turned away, then said something to Tenzin.

It had all been over in a minute, but – something was _off._ It was miles away from whatever they had shared at Pema and Tenzin's home. It was…

Korra stepped up to Bataar again. And when she spoke this time, Asami just caught snatches, no matter how hard she tried. "I'm not gonna physically hurt you… even more painful… take away…"

The last word was inaudible, but the effect on Bataar was electric. He jolted with shock, and although he composed himself again, it was clear Korra's words were more frightening than the Avatar State had been.

He asked something, and Korra explained.

"Kuvira might win... But you won't be around…" her volume dropped again. Korra kept talking, and whatever she was saying worked, because Bataar was falling apart before their eyes. Finally, Korra straightened up and said, "Is taking the city worth losing Kuvira forever?"

"Huh?" Bolin asked. He'd been listening as intently (and to as little effect) as Asami had. He whispered, "Did… did Korra just threaten to outright murder Kuvira?"

"That can't be," Asami whispered. "It's too straightforward…" The logistical difficulties alone were staggering... She coughed. "And, um, it's wrong."

"But it's working," Bolin pointed out.

Bataar's proud posture and arrogance had all broken. He nodded to Korra, over and over again, a puppet on a broken string. Tenzin brought over a radio.

"He gave in!" Bolin whisper-exclaimed. "He yielded! It's over!"

Asami groaned, and finger-signed against bad spirits, and then spat on the floor, just like Yasuko had taught her.

"What was that for?" Bolin demanded.

She sighed. "You jinxed it."

The radio turned on, loud and staticky. Asami whispered, "They must be signaling Kuvira. Getting her to accept the terms."

"What terms?" Bolin asked.

"Probably not the threat of murder."

"What, then?" Bolin asked.

But she didn't answer. She was watching Korra. Unobserved, the Avatar just slumped. She ran a hand through her hair. She shook her head. Whatever the terms had been, she was not proud of them. But she recovered in a moment. She took the radio - now properly tuned - from Tenzin. Bataar spoke into it - again, barely audible to those on the other side of the warehouse. After a time, his volume rose, his voice swelling with hope and affection.

"Forget the United Republic; we have our empire! We have each other!"

"'We have our empire'?" Bolin repeated. " _That's_ Korra's treaty of peace?" Asami shushed him. Oh, but Bataar's voice was heartbreaking now. "Let's go back home and get married. The only thing that matters is that we're together for the rest of our lives."

And now Asami heard Kuvira's voice. "You're right. This city isn't worth sacrificing our life together." There was something wrong in her tone. Asami tensed again. She'd concealed her feelings too often to not gain a sense for it... "I love you, Baatar." Something was _very_ wrong.

The distant drums - the war drums, they were _here_ \- and Mako yelled,  
"Guys! She must have our location! She's pointing that weapon right at us!"

Asami's first thought was of her line of hummingbird mecha, only in the next room.

Screams broke out. People started running for the exit - Asami's first step was to run towards the factory room, towards her mecha - Bolin seized her hand, yelled something, and Asami saw Korra, running towards her - the world around them erupted into light -

and silence.


	10. In which the world changes shape

The explosion should have killed them all.

Should have, but it didn't. No fatalities. A pure miracle.

Asami was sure that the Avatar Spirit within Korra had something to do with it, but _how_ was another question… one that they did not have time for. Now Korra directed the crowd.

"Su, you take Baatar Jr. and the rest of the wounded back to Asami's office..." Korra looked at Varrick, and then at Zhu Li. "Get those suits working as soon as you can..." Korra took a deep breath, and turned to meet Asami's eyes. "The rest of us will just have to face Kuvira on our own."

Asami read her so easily and clearly – she was afraid as hell, but still going out there. And Asami wanted to hold her back and tell her not to go – she agreed with Bolin, the city would stand another day – but she instead stood tall. She would match Korra's courage. Anything less would dishonor the woman she loved.

Asami stepped forward. "The quickest route to get to my office from here will be…"

000

Asami had designed the hummingbird mecha around a cornerstone of Water Tribe philosophy, quaint as it sounded. The best partnerships were not made of identical parts, but complementary elements. Yin and yang. Push and pull. In this case, pilot and sniper. One to fly the unusual aircraft, and one to manage whatever weapons Asami could hot-glue onto it fast enough.

There was a problem, though – they had two mecha suits, which needed four combatants, and only three potential candidates, unless Asami wanted to pull from the already-thinned ranks of Airbenders.

Chalk that down as one _more_ impossible problem on an already chaotic game board. Asami felt burdened with the responsibility to salvage everything, somehow. Yes, Varrick and Zhu Li were doing something – but they were delaying, and delaying only the auxiliary at that. It fell to Asami to play offense. From her high-rise window, she tried to see the game board of Republic City and the tiles in play, but it wouldn't come clear…

Small-fast-weak. Small-fast-weak. Small-fast-weak could defeat large-slow-strong…

But there was supposed to be a _fleet_ of hummingbirds. Yes, she had the prototypes… all _two_ of them. It seemed like one of Varrick's stupid jokes: "Two hummingbird mechas walk into a Colossus. You'd think the second one woulda ducked!"

Okay, an electromagnetic pulse had taken out the smaller mecha. Asami mentally filed that away as a Winter Wind tile taking out some of the smaller pieces. But the Colossus was still walking. Varrick and Zhu Li reentered, and Bolin voiced Asami's concern, demanding to know why the pulse hadn't worked. It was Bataar Jr. who answered.

"Because it's powered by Spirit Vine energy. I'm sorry." Asami the gamer was irritated with his trite and inadequate attempt at an apology. Asami the daughter of Yasuko pitied his broken heart. "I wish I could help you, but it's unstoppable."

A familiar but unexpected voice answered, "It's not."

Asami looked up, startled. "Dad?"

Hiroshi Sato stood at the top of the stairs, Lin Beifong standing beside him. She explained, "I got him out of jail to help. I figured we need all the geniuses we can get our hands on right now. If the prison's still standing after all this is over – " she shrugged – "we can throw him back in."

Hiroshi looked at Korra as he said, "I know what you all must think of me, but I love Republic City and I would do anything to save her."

Korra asked, with all the confidence and skepticism of a general, "You think you know how to defeat this thing?"

"You must act like an infection," Hiroshi replied. "Break the skin and attack its vital organs. Disconnect the heart and the brain and this beast cannot live."

And things started to fall into place. Plasma saws… fitted to the hummingbirds… the fourth combatant, who would work the saws while Asami piloted… and the burden was no longer hers to bear alone.

Lin escorted Hiroshi to the workshop floor, and gave the hummingbirds her own cursory inspection. As Asami set to work adjusting the claws, she overheard her father say, "You will not regret this, Chief Beifong. I promise."

Lin grunted. "You just caught me in a good mood. I talked to my mother the other day and now I'm all sappy for family reunions."

Asami grinned to herself.

Time to get to work…

It was so good to work together again, Asami thought. Sato and Sato. Who knew, but maybe her father would get time off for community service… maybe things could be better, going forward. Well, best not to get too tangled up in that… but still, what was a war without hope…

"How long will it take to get the plasma saws ready?" Korra asked, breaking Asami's concentration. She had been utterly absorbed in her task.

"Just a few more minutes," she replied.

"Get out there as soon as you can," Korra called in response. Asami didn't exactly like receiving orders, but – well, this was war.

She was about to lower her visor to weld again, when she saw the team of benders leaving – Korra among them.

Asami, absurdly, flashed back to the first place she had seen Korra, on the floor of city hall, in that blue gown. A lifetime ago. And now she was walking out the door…

"Korra!" Asami yelled, before she could stop herself.

Korra stopped, and turned towards her. Even from this far away, her eyes were electric.

Asami swallowed hard. "Good luck," she said.

She saw Korra hesitate, as if there were too many things she wanted to say. After a heartbeat, Korra raised a hand. "See you later." And then she nodded, turned away, and was gone.

Asami closed her eyes, let her grief pass through her, and then opened her eyes again. A few more minutes, and she could fight alongside her.

Soon the suits were ready. Asami traded her hard-as-lead work gloves for her soft, broken-in pilots' gloves. She looked at the hummingbird mecha again. It was her creation –if you were poetically inclined, you could almost call it her nestling – and she thought, ' _I could die in there.'_

She shivered, but moved past it. All that was left to do now was to test the plasma saws on a six-inch sheet of platinum. Make sure it was the optimal machine of invasion.

Asami stood by on the stairway as her father tested the saw. It worked – worked like a charm. Asami was flooded again with admiration and pride for her father's brilliantly simple idea. It was almost like being a little child again, with that certainty that her Daddy could fix everything, and no need to play pretend or hide her feelings.

No use hiding her admiration, Asami thought. "If we stop that mecha giant," she told him, "it will all be because of you."

"You're the one who designed these incredible suits." Asami looked down, honored. She would have to tell him about her Pai Sho inspiration, when things quieted down. "It's great to be working together again."

She put her hand on her father's. "I love you, Dad."

The warmth and pride in his eyes was nearly tangible. "I love you, too."

Asami settled herself in to the pilot's seat. Flight was her friend. These hummingbirds were her nestlings. They would not fail her.

A cry interrupted her thought process: Varrick hoisted Zhu Li into his arm with a gleeful holler of "Now let's go attach these barely functional rust buckets to a giant killer smashing machine!"

"Barely functional rust buckets?" Asami repeated, as Zhu Li made some reply she didn't hear.

Hiroshi turned on their inter-hummingbird radios. "Why the high spirits?"

Before Zhu Li answered, Varrick carried her up the flight of stairs and deposited her in the hummingbird's pilot suit with more gallantry than grace. She turned on her radio, and Asami saw her smiling widely. "Varrick just asked to marry me, and I said yes."

"Well! Congratulations!" Hiroshi said. "Remind me when the dust has settled, I'll buy you two some flatware."

Asami laughed, then turned her radio on and said, "Congratulations to you both."

The hummingbirds came to life and began ascent. The airbenders who were still well enough to walk opened the windows at the northern end of the workshop, and the hummingbirds flew out of it, rattling badly with the sudden turbulence of the height.

Maybe Hiroshi could sense Asami's nerves. He turned off the intra-hummingbird radio and said to her, "So! Varrick and his assistant. I can't say that's a match I predicted." His tone was easy, calming. He'd used this same strategy when Asami was learning to drive.

"They seem to get along alright," Asami replied. Yes, she could do this, she could talk and pilot at the same time. She had the hang of it: the hummingbird was gliding now. "Opposites attract, you know."

"It's a good omen," Hiroshi replied. After a pause (they coursed over the city, towards the Colossus), he added, "You remember you once had a dream, where you were preparing to get married? In a Water Tribe house?"

The remark took her aback, but she said, "Yes, I do. That was long ago. You remember that, Dad?"

"Of course."

For a moment, Asami felt perfectly normal, in that she was praying that her Dad wasn't going to ask about her love life, and undergoing some preliminary embarrassment just in case he _did_. But instead, he commented on their descent, and speculated out loud that the best place to land on the Colossus might be the shoulder, or else the thigh.

And then… and then, well, it was war. At first it seemed that Zhu Li would get her mecha onto the Colossus first – but things changed, and Asami and her father maneuvered towards one of the enormous legs. But then the Colossus made to swat them, and they had to leave again.

So intent was Asami on piloting that she almost didn't see the massive wave that crashed into the Colossus. It was the strength of an entire river, and it all turned to ice in an instant, freezing the Colossus in place, like all winter in a breath.

"Thank you, Korra," Asami whispered.

The Spirit Cannon discharged again. Asami saw a curl of smoke out of the corner of her eye.

"The other hummingbird's out," Hiroshi said flatly. "I see the pilots' parachutes."

Asami swallowed hard. It was all on them, now. A quick counterclockwise turn, and she found an exposed patch of platinum on the thigh.

Asami landed, engaged the gripping gear, and Hiroshi got to work.

How had the plasma saws seemed so _quick_ in the workshop, but were so maddeningly slow here? Asami looked up, and shuddered hard. The Colossus was moving again. Kuvira's unstoppable willpower was at work, directed against them, and them personally.

Okay, this was officially not working. "We need to get out of here," she said. ' _Try the shoulder_ ,' she thought, ' _The shoulder will be better_.'

"Almost there," said her father, as patient as she'd ever heard him. The plasma saws continued to buzz.

Shards of ice the size of tires fell onto the glass, cracking it. Asami's voice broke with fear. "We have to go, _now!_ "

"Almost there… almost there…"

' _I'm going to die here,'_ Asami thought. ' _I'm going to die in the suit I built_.' She looked further up, and the arm of the Colossus broke free. She cried, "Dad! _Now!_ "

The plasma saws buzzed, more ice fell, and Asami almost didn't hear Hiroshi's words: "Goodbye, Asami."

The world stopped.

"I love you."

Asami screamed. "DAD!"

Hiroshi ejected his daughter from the hummingbird mecha suit. She flew backwards, and the parachute opened automatically, and she saw the Colossus crush the suit – and her father. As the debris fell away, a circle of platinum fell away with it. A hole appeared in the Colossus' thigh – there was movement on the ground –

Asami fell behind a building and saw no more. She looked around, tried to brace herself, and instead landed – badly – on the pavement. She checked automatically for broken bones – nothing – and then she couldn't move any more. She lay on her hands and knees, because her world had once again collapsed into fire and ash, and her father was dead, and she was more alone than she had ever been.

The Colossus was walking away, and Korra was in there, now. Asami could not bend, she could not reach her, there was nothing she could do. She sat where she had fallen, trying to absorb what had happened.

Her dad was dead. Hiroshi Sato had chosen to die. No more Pai Sho games. No more cups of tea. No more father.

Asami did not know how long she sat like that. The city was empty all around her, and the noises of the fight had faded to echoes.

' _Pay attention, Asami, pay attention_ ,' she thought. She turned, looked towards the sound, wandered to the street to try and see the Colossus.

This was strange. It was tearing off its own arm. What kind of insanity would provoke that?

Asami started to run towards it.

' _Why are you doing this_?' she asked herself. But she already knew the answer.

Korra was in the Colossus. That was reason enough.

Asami stopped and ducked when an explosion rocked the city. When it had stopped, Asami could no longer see the Colossus.

Well, that could only be good, right?

But which way… where had it been? Wherever it was, there Korra would be…

Asami took off again, and she was still running when a terrible explosion erupted from miles ahead. Asami took shelter in the opening of a subway station. When she turned after a count of ten, the blast was still flooding the street. The color was nightmarish – as if the color purple could scream – and it was scorchingly hot, but worst of all was the sick prickling sensation that erupted all over Asami's body. She toppled, like the earth was rocking under her. Like she was changing, changing in size, in form, in substance – she held out her hands and didn't recognize them – she was wearing silver furs, and she could feel something around her throat –

And then a mighty wind flowed past Asami. She turned and saw the blast returning whence it had come. Nothing looked burned or damaged – she emerged from the subway station – and saw a great light, far ahead.

The blast, the light, the changing. That explosion – it could only have one source. The Avatar was calling on the deepest source of her power, gambling her life for the world she loved so well.

Asami began to run again.

She wished she hadn't listened so closely to her mother's stories about Avatar Yangchen. She wished she didn't have to remember what Yangchen believed, and lived - that the Avatar lived for the world, and considered their body's death a small price to pay for peace.

Asami slowed when she entered the crater, hardly believing what she saw. It was a rift in her city, a tangle of spirit vines wilder and madder than ever before, extending out around a new Spirit Portal. Korra was nowhere to be seen.

"Asami!" That was Jinora, landing next to her. "Are you alright? Your dad -"

"I'm fine," Asami said flatly. She knew it was a lie.

So did Jinora. "Can you help us look for Korra? She and Kuvira were stranded right here when the gun - the weapon must have exploded - we can't find any trace of them. Can you help us look?"

Asami glanced up. Jinora followed her gaze. The Spirit Portal towered all the way into the heavens, an aperture to a world of limitless hazards and horrors.

"We don't know if that Portal is stable," Jinora said firmly. "We're going to comb every inch in this world before we look… there. Asami, please help."

Asami nodded and said she would. She had to do something.

She stumbled over the vines and rubble, looking everywhere and seeing nothing. Somehow, she just knew that Korra was nowhere to be found in this world. And if Korra was gone… and Dad was gone…

Asami stared up at the empty sky. Her future became a black hole, carrying her with it into a deep and dazzling darkness.

It felt like hours and hours passed. It was true night by now, though Asami would have welcomed darkness, compared to the Portal's garish beam.

The Spirit Portal. Korra was somewhere on the other side. Somewhere in that vast, unknowable world…

' _How I would love to see it_ ,' said a voice deep within her. ' _After so long in prison_...' Asami stilled, and stared at the Portal, but heard no more.

"Ummi," Asami said, so softly even she didn't hear.

The past. You could never escape it. In that way, it was like the future...

Asami saw Tenzin on ledge above her, and she climbed it to stand alongside him. Jinora landed on Tenzin's other side and began to talk to him. Asami, looking at them, saw a father-daughter resemblance that she had never seen before, and it _hurt_. She looked out, towards the bay…

And the air began to fill with spirits. They flowed out from the new portal – accepting it, blessing it – Tenzin stared outward, saying "The spirits have returned!"

Asami turned back, and was the first to see it – white seared the feather-yellow of the Portal, as sudden as a strike of ink against a blank page. At the base of it, two small figures came into view.

"And so has Korra!" Asami said. She nearly fell down the ridge, running towards the Portal, beginning to sob, crying with joy. Because Korra was striding out, into the light, bracing Kuvira with strength to spare.


	11. In which Asami reads a letter

Asami stayed with Korra for as long as she could. She was at Korra's side for the signing of peace treaties and the declaration of surrender over the radio, and for the quick pick-me-up dinner from the one noodle stand still open in Republic City. But then the people at City Hall got down to the business of surrender. This was the province of the military leaders, and Asami was not one of them. Bolin and Mako had already left, to get Mako's arm looked at, and Jinora led her siblings to the train station to find Pema.

For Asami, it was time to collect her father's body. Or whatever was left of it.

She took a Satomobile to the site, which was only a mile or two up from where the Colossus itself had fallen. To her surprise, there were already police officers there, cleaning up the wreckage. They told her that the Police Chief had been and gone; she had personally cleared out the remains, such as they were, and said she would be at the crematorium on Cypress Street. Asami met Lin Beifong there, and they got down to the business of death.

Asami tried to thank the older woman for having retrieved her father's body. Lin half-raised a hand, as if to stop her, and said, haltingly, "I hope that I wasn't too forward. But I thought that no kid ought to have to handle their parents' remains."

Asami stopped. "I'm not—"

"You're not a kid. You're a woman of the world. But I take some of the blame, here, too. If I hadn't released your father on probation, he might still be alive. This is the least I can do." She closed her eyes. "Miss Sato, if you're angry at me, you have every right to be. You can be angry for the rest of your life."

"No," Asami said slowly. "I was... in Dad's last moments, it couldn't be clearer it was his choice. What he did. His choice. And so…" She looked away, unable to finish.

"Well." Lin cleared her throat. "He died with honor. You can be proud of him for that. If there's anything else you need that I can offer… well, you know where to find me."

Asami bowed deeply to the Chief, and thanked her again.

The First Municipal Prison delivered Hiroshi Sato's small personal effects, including the letters that Asami had returned to him unread. Asami kept them, but still could not read them. She did not have the strength to. So she put them away somewhere safe, for another day.

The funeral was exceedingly simple. Asami invited a few friends of her father's, and managed to track down the priestess who had said the funeral rites for Yasuko. The body was swiftly cremated, the ashes packed into a small urn, and the urn buried in the western garden, beside the one that held Yasuko's ashes. Asami stood as the chief mourner, wearing pure white.

When Yasuko had died, Hiroshi had told his daughter that there was no weakness in tears. He had cried openly. Asami believed this still, but refused to give in during the rites. She didn't want to miss anything, though tears poured down her face and her breath choked. She didn't cry until her father's urn was lowered into the ground.

Then she bent forward, and when the dirt closed over the urn she buried her face in a white handkerchief, sobbing. She heard the priestess say the prayers to purify Hiroshi's soul, and send him with speed to the Wheel of Rebirth.

When the ceremony was over Asami gathered her dignity around her again. She escorted the priestess out, and handed her a generous cash tip, with polite thanks.

The priestess looked at the money, and took it casually, as if it were a flower. She looked into Asami's eyes and said, "I'm truly sorry for all the grief that you've suffered. You are welcome to visit White Peak Shrine, where I live. Remember, you are young, and life has much more joy in store for you."

She laid a wrinkled hand on Asami's hair, like a benediction, and then left.

Then she was out of sight, and Asami was alone again.

000

The day after her father's funeral, Asami was ready to get back to work.

So she told herself.

She wore dove grey and tied a white ribbon around her arm to indicate mourning. She went into her garage, picked a car, and opened the garage door.

But someone was standing there, a short figure outlined by the morning light. "Hey, Asami," said Korra.

"Oh." Asami was glad to see Korra, and her heart leapt and stomach sank in a way that was familiar by now, but all of this just reminded Asami of how tired she felt. Too tired to deal with anyone, even Korra. She couldn't decide what to say. Perhaps Korra interpreted the silence as hostility, because she quickly said, "Cousin Ginseng showed me in... Told me you'd be here, and I wanted to catch you before you..." She paused. "Back to work already?"

"Yes," Asami said. "What is it, Korra?"

"Your letter." Korra stepped forward. "I wrote out my response..." She didn't meet Asami's eyes. "Here it is... Only eight months late."

She held out an envelope. Asami took it. She couldn't even remember what letter it was she had written. She knew it was important… but nothing else could get through that fog in her head.

"I'll see myself out," Korra said. She looked down at her feet. "Try not to hate me too much once you've read it."

"Hate you?" Asami repeated, but Korra had already turned to go. Asami didn't follow. She looked down at the letter in her hands.

And remembered.

000

Five minutes later Asami was driving down the 101 Freeway with all the windows rolled down. She drove right past the exit to take to go to Future Industries Tower, and instead turned North on Exit 6, for Zei University, which was still intact – mostly thanks to the humble height of its buildings. She found the Libraryand requested a private reading room.

Alone, she took a deep breath. That small letter was very intimidating. Despite what Korra had said on Air Temple Island – " _I believe you_ ," Asami could still remember it – she couldn't help being afraid. Maybe Korra thought Asami was insane. Maybe Korra hated her. Maybe trying to talk things out in a clear and rational manner had made everything worse.

No use putting it off any longer. With all her courage in hand, Asami opened the envelope, unfolded the paper, and read.

"Dear Asami,

I'm sorry that this letter is late. I didn't know what to write.

I believe you, definitely. You've always been so straightforward with me. You've had so many visions and dreams - and they're all the same, and they're so specific. It weirds me out to look back and think you must have been going through this, while I was right next to you and didn't have a clue.

But it makes sense. Maybe this is where your resilience comes from, the way that you could always stride forward no matter what happened to you. Or your compassion, or your curiosity – or maybe all that's just you, just Asami. I don't know.

This is what happened to me, though, and I warn you, it's going to sound weird…

The night after we had lunch together, and I saw you again for the first time, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was Avatar Kuruk.

I was hunting Koh the Face-Stealer, in the Spirit World. I was looking for Ummi - but also for you. In the dream, you were one person. Time was unstuck. One moment I had been looking for you for thirty years, all alone, and the next I'd been hunting for three days, and I felt red-hot with anger. But worse than the anger was the pain and loneliness.

I woke up and I genuinely couldn't remember if you were still alive in this world, or if I would ever see you again. Only hearing Naga wake up next to me let me know I was Korra, I was me.

I turned on a light, and I found the drawing that you did of your mother. It's still at Air Temple Island. I watched it while I meditated to calm myself down. Then I wrote the dream down, every detail. Later that morning, I went to the Southern Tribe Embassy and asked for my letters. There were so many! But I found yours, and I read it first.

I didn't know what to think. It was like you answered my dream before I'd even had it. I was so confused.

I meant to talk to you sooner. There are three earlier drafts of this letter in my room. But there was so much to think about.

I tried to figure out what Koh the Face Stealer has done – why would he release a face? That's never been recorded in history – but, then again, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I still haven't had much interaction with spirits besides purifying those who've been corrupted – and Koh is not corrupted. Appetite and greed are his nature, that's his "normal."

Maybe he knew Harmonic Convergence was coming, and somehow it was going to affect him, so he decided to release some souls. Maybe it was his idea of balancing fate's books. Or maybe he was just a sadist, like you suggested. Sometimes I wonder if Koh was an aspect of Vaatu. But I didn't have time to figure it out, when the city was under attack. I put it on the backburner, but I meant to work it out with you soon.

But I remembered, suddenly, at the worst possible time. When we had Bataar Jr. captured and were trying to get him to talk, I flashed back to the dream I'd had of being Kuruk, chasing Koh. I knew what Bataar's greatest fear was. I knew because in that one dream, I had lived it all.

And so I used that threat on him. I told him that I would take him with me to the ends of the world, where he would never, ever see Kuvira again. I could see, in that instant, what that would be like - me, bending up a hurricane at the North Pole, dragging him behind me as we crossed the endless ice, where Kuvira's mecha can't go. And we were both old.

Asami, what I did to him was cruel. I'm ashamed to say it wasn't even the cruelest thing I've ever done, but it was the only threat I ever made where I knew the pain firsthand.

And it worked on him. And as soon as he gave in, I felt ashamed. I would have used Raava's power for the rest of my life on a spiteful mission, forever on the run. I would have become Koh.

Fifteen minutes later, we learned that threat did not work on Kuvira. That kind of made me feel better about myself, and my morals, by comparison, you know? But not a lot better.

[Here Korra drew a little frowny face]

The fact is, I don't know what to say. I'm back to swinging between being happy for Varrick and Zhu Li, and happy that there's peace again, and being deeply confused. I thought that my memories of all my past lifetimes were dead and gone. But one letter from you and I woke up from a dream of Kuruk.

Maybe it's not a memory, though. It could be an expression of regret from this lifetime. Kuruk couldn't protect Ummi, and he couldn't rescue her after all those years. I spent three years just trying to heal, and I couldn't be there for you the way that you needed. I'm so sorry for that. I guess neither Kuruk nor I turned out to be the heroes you thought we were.

Whenever you want to talk to me in person, please reach out. I hope you don't hate me too much.

All my love,

Korra"

Asami read the letter once quickly, twice slowly, and a fourth time in a jumble of phrases that leapt out at her. Finally she put the paper aside and walked around the little room, and came to look out the window.

So. That explained Korra's behavior this morning. She was ashamed - she thought Asami would hate her. That was absurd, but then again, an hour ago Asami had been certain that Korra hated her.

If Asami was not so tired, she might have laughed out loud.

Instead, she undid her neat bun and ran her hands through her hair. She got up and walked around the room. Something was filling her up, making her feel clear as a pane of glass, light as a leaf on the wind. It took her a moment to identify this feeling as _joy_. Joy, because Asami had trusted Korra and that trust had been rewarded. Joy, because she had shared her deepest, most secret self and Korra had accepted her unconditionally. Joy, arising from her love for Korra. And she, Asami, was safe in Korra's love for her. Master Katara had been right all along – love could heal, love could make clear.

Who was Asami? She was Ummi the Lost, and she had found herself again. She was the flickering human spirit who – for two lifetimes now – had dared to love the Avatar, whose handprint had shaped history.

History. Now there was another marvel. She looked out the window at the campus, the skyline, the mountains. History was everywhere: the layout of Republic City, born from three fishing towns, fused into a merchant's capital; the Air Nomad gardens of the university; every book on the shelves, every building on the streets; history was evident in the students of Zei University. They'd crossed the world to come here, and now were talking and walking side by side, enraptured by the future.

Korra was history, the spirit in her showing the way to peace and harmony for untold eons. The United Republic was history: the great healed scar of the Hundred Years' War, the nation that had shaped Asami in every way. Asami was history, she realized. She was her mother and father, everything they had taught her; every place she had been, everything she had created; she was everything she loved and remembered; she was the reincarnation of Ummi, and in a past lifetime, she and Korra had been in love.

And in this lifetime, in this moment, Asami was in love with Korra.

And Korra believed her.

It was like waking up from a dream, to leave the reading room and walk between the shelves, to say thanks and head out under the Republic City haze. How beautiful the world was! How good to be a part of it, even for a brief time! How wonderful to have found Korra, and that they understood each other so well!

Wait… they didn't!

Asami hurried to her car and pulled out a pencil and spare sheet of paper (she kept both in her briefcase). She wrote out a note. Next to a drawing of Korra, as fine and noble as a few strokes could manage, Asami wrote,

"Korra, thank you for your letter. Thank you for believing me. Let's talk more, soon. I could never hate you. All my love, Asami."

She delivered it to Korra in person, on Air Temple Island. Pema invited Asami for dinner, and Asami was glad to accept. Under the table, she found Korra's hand and squeezed it.

000

The wedding of Zhu Li and Varrick was magnificent. It was almost like being back at the Glowing Tide Festival, with the smell of stewed sea-prunes and saltwater caramel in the air. Asami thought, walking through the transformed Air Temple, that it might as well have been a marriage ceremony of Republic City and the Southern Water Tribe. Every detail showed a considerate melding of the two cultures. Every detail was touched with love.

But there was something missing. She moved among the people, acting like the girl that appeared in the newspapers – the glamorous, stunning socialite Miss Sato. But after a few dances, she was exhausted. Grief had taken its toll. She decided that the best way to spend the evening was to sit at her assigned table and sample various cocktails.

And then, by accident, suddenly it was just Asami and Korra, together, alone. And Asami didn't know if she dreaded this moment or wanted it more than anything.

Then, with a little beckoning nod, Korra said, "Wanna sit with me for a minute? I'm not ready to get back to the party just yet."

The talk that Korra and Asami fell into was light, sincere, casual, and would change their lives forever. Asami didn't bring up anything about letters or past lifetimes; she didn't need to. She talked instead about the recent past, the loss of her father. But pervading all of these thoughts was a deep and glowing gratitude for the woman sitting next to her.

"Let's do it!" Korra exclaimed, bringing Asami back to the present. "Let's take a vacation, just the two of us. Anywhere you want."

And like that, the future laid itself out. Only a part of it... A month or two... But it was enough. Asami found herself gazing at the Spirit Portal again. Now it was not a beacon of fear. There was a world of miracles beyond it, and so many strange and wonderful things, and the stories her mother had told...

She turned to Korra and said, with a shy smile, "I've always wanted to see what the Spirit World is like."

Korra grinned. "Sounds perfect."

000

It took three days to prepare for her vacation. Asami knew how to lay her affairs in order. She knew exactly who to leave in charge of what part of Future Industries – no, don't even try to call her, she was going completely off the grid. No, she didn't know how long she'd be away. But she had perfect faith in her people. Future Industries would be fine. The world would turn without her.

Asami and Korra were roommates on Air Temple Island for one more night. They woke up early in the morning, before sunrise. They suited up and headed out, Korra waterbending a small skiff towards the Republic City docks, and the Spirit Portal.

It was strange, Asami thought as they neared the beacon. When she had been alone and looking for Korra, the Spirit Portal had been forbidding and terrifying, a vortex. Now that Korra was here… well, Asami wasn't afraid at all.

They didn't say much after they left the Temple, and nothing at all as they stepped over the vines and toward the Portal. What would they have said?

Asami's heart pounded. A cold certainty filled her—certainty that this "vacation" would be different from anything she'd done before. She would not return to this world as the same girl she was now.

She glanced at Korra, and knew that Korra felt the same way.

It was a feeling close to dread, but Asami was serene. If she was going to be with Korra, it would be alright.

Without any word or sign, as they reached the Portal, Asami reached out, and Korra took her hand. They turned to each other as they passed over the threshold, and looked into each other's eyes –

For a moment, they were between two worlds, wordless but communicating – communing – understanding each other perfectly –

The world changed around them, and –

Korra's hands tightened on Asami's –

They leaned forward and kissed.

It lasted a few seconds, and then their feet touched the soil of the Spirit World, and they broke apart and looked at each other.

Nothing had touched except their hands, their noses, and their mouths.

But everything was different now.

They stared at each other, and then Asami's face broke out into a smile. She and Korra started to laugh, with sudden embarrassment and delight, and the spell of silence was broken.

"Hi," Korra said.

"Hi," said Asami, beaming. "Good morning, Korra."

Korra stepped back and gestured to the world before them. "Welcome to the Spirit World! No maps, no directions, nothing to tell us where to go – so where do you want to start?"

Asami looked around, and shook her head. She took Korra's hand. "Let's just start walking. See where the road takes us."

"What road?" Korra asked.

"Exactly."

Korra laughed, and they set off, across a caldera covered with purple flowers.

A/N: Ah, wonderful. A relaxing way to end the chapter. Now it's time for Spirit World Vacation Shenanigans! The story isn't over yet, folks. Thank you for reading so far, and thank you especially for each and every review. This is a shameless plug, pointing out (with no possible ulterior motive) that you might enjoy my Korrasami fanmix, "Vintage," on 8tracks. Also, if you like this story, please recommend it to others! Fandom is like nachos – best when shared.

One chapter and an epilogue left. What do you think might happen? See you next week~


	12. In which Asami and Korra find a tree

So, as first kisses went, that was a pretty damn good one.

The second kiss was better, though.

And the third was better than that.

They were six days in the Spirit World and Asami could not believe her life. Traveling the Spirit World was like traveling in a dream, from the eccentric Spirits that greeted them everywhere, to the peculiar rules of time and space, to the incredible vistas of color and light. Asami couldn't remember the last time she had felt so free. There were no responsibilities. There was no one to impress. She and Korra could be entirely themselves.

Asami's happiness was not complete, though. More times than she could count in a day, she would remember her father, and wish that she could share what they were experiencing with him – or with her mother, when she _really_ felt like reaching for impossibilities. Sometimes she would sob out loud; sometimes she would snap at Korra, only to regret that within minutes.

For the most part, Asami could get by; that is to say, she could feel, mostly, like her normal self, with a sad exhaustion always tugging at her heels. No matter what, Korra held her hand, hugged her close, and understood. They walked at Asami's pace through the mysterious vistas of the Spirit World.

On the morning of the sixth day, Asami lay still, waking up slowly, enjoying the fold of Korra's hand in her own. She heard a sound in the distance – something she hadn't noticed last night. Then again, Korra said, the landscape of the Spirit World was not exactly reliable – they'd woken up more than once in a spot completely different from where they'd fallen asleep. It was somewhat of a nuisance, but as long as they woke up together, they didn't mind too much.

Asami listened, and tried to place the noise, and when she realized it – trust a city slicker to not know the sound! – she sat up bolt upright.

"It's a river!" she exclaimed.

Korra mumbled something. It sounded like "Tissit, Katara?"

Asami glanced sharply at her, but Korra's eyes cleared and she asked, "What is it, Asami?"

"I think there's a river nearby," she said.

"A river!" Korra sat up, awake at once.

They gathered their things together, ate their breakfast (they asked a local pear tree for some fruit, and thanked it politely), and headed out, down a slope to a sparkling river. Asami strayed closer to the water, admiring it. Something about it felt familiar.

"Whoa, Asami!" Korra exclaimed as Asami reached the banks, which were slippery with dark mud. "Don't fall in! Don't touch it!"

"Korra, I was fine," Asami said, confused. Now that they could see the river clearly, it looked calm and quiescent and perfectly ordinary, except for the fact that beneath its pearlescent reflection of the sky, its water was colored black.

"No, this river is dangerous. Katara told me about it. It's the River of Forgetting."

"Oh?" Asami looked at it again, up and down its course, to where it swooped and curved out of sight. "Let me guess, you touch the water and you forget everything that happened to you in your life?"

"If you drink the water, yeah," Korra answered, taking Asami's hand. She led them upriver, keeping a healthy distance from the silky black water. "There's a Tribal legend about it. Once every… what is it? Forty-four years? Some weird number like that… the River of Forgetting and the River of Remembrance change their course and flow into the physical world."

The River of Remembrance. That phrase threw a stone into the wells of Asami's memory, and sent out ripples. Where had she heard that phrase before?

Korra went on, "I know that they run through the South Pole - I think maybe there's also a route through the Fire Nation? Anyway, the healers of the South would bend a little bit of water from this river, and the other one, into red clay jugs and seal them up. Sometimes, this water is the best for healing… but only if the healer really, really knows what they're doing."

Asami put a hand on an almost-empty canteen. "Care to bend some of this, to take home?"

Korra held out her hands and shook her head with a smile. "Asami, I can't bend in the Spirit World. Haven't you noticed?"

Asami stared. She had not noticed. She'd thought Korra was just… what? Being polite? "Can't bend? Not even you? The _Avatar_?"

"Not even me."

"Oh! Then you and I are finally—" she stopped herself before…

"Equal," Korra said. "Yep. Welcome to the Spirit World." She paused, then said, "You've _always_ been my equal, Asami."

Asami could feel herself blushing. "Well, obviously, thank you." She coughed. "Speaking of equality, where's the other river?"

"It has a totally different source and route. But Remembrance and Forgetting do meet. They meet at a waterfall, just on the shore of the Great Sea. You couldn't miss it – the River of Remembrance – because it's completely white." she added.

"I know," Asami said quickly. "I saw it, in the dream I had before Harmonic Convergence." She halted with the realization that, over six days, they still had not brought up the letters they'd exchange. They had not so much as breathed the name "Ummi."

And now, Asami had broached the topic, and waited, breathlessly –

Korra said, "The vision where you saw Avatar Kuruk and Koh, the Face-Stealer."

"Yes," Asami felt relieved, now that it was out there. "I only just remembered it. It was how Kuruk trapped it, at last. Koh couldn't touch the River of Remembrance – maybe because it meant all the souls he'd collected would remember themselves again. Anyway, it would hurt, he said."

There was a pause. Asami finally said, "I thought that was quite clever of Kuruk, to realize."

Instead of replying, Korra shifted her backpack to her hip, and began to rummage through it.

"You aren't upset, are you?" Asami asked.

Korra pulled out three sheets of paper, folded together and covered over in Asami's neat script. She held it up and said, "I remember that, I'm just pretty sure you didn't mention the river by name. And… _yes_ , I've been carrying your letter around all this time. I'm a sap."

Asami left the riverbank, stood beside Korra, and reached into her own pack. She pulled out an envelope – Korra's letter. "Either I'm also a sap, or great minds think alike," she said.

" _Or_?" Korra asked. They both laughed. Korra pulled Asami in for a quick kiss, and they broke apart but stayed close, staring into each other's eyes.

Finally, Korra looked down at the pages she held. "So… Kuruk and Ummi."

"Ummi and Kuruk." Asami stepped back, and with a little adjustment, her pack was back on her shoulder. Asami led the way as they walked downriver.

"Have you been waiting long to bring them up?"

"No. I was happy just exploring with you… but I knew we'd have to… you know…"

"Yeah."

"Eventually."

"Right." Korra paused to watch the overhead movement of a fleet of funny, potato-shaped creatures fly by with leaf propellers. "I'm flabbergasted, that you had this whole journey going on and I had no idea until just a few weeks ago. What if _you_ hadn't remembered it, either? Can you imagine?"

"That would have been normal," Asami pointed out, as Korra jogged to catch up with her.

"Normal for everyone else. But _weird_ for you and me. I mean, you, being the reincarnation of Ummi, after all this time… and me, Kuruk's reincarnation, and we meet and we don't get along and then we get to know each other and then…" Korra let the sweet, tenuous reality that they shared remain unspoken, and then went on, "... and all the time, we never know. We never realize who it is we're next to. No, Asami, I'm glad you told me. I'm glad I know."

Asami smiled, and felt herself blushing again. "What was important to me was that you believed me. Everything else, after that…"

"Really? Did you doubt yourself?"

"A little." She hitched her shoulders. "Can't really stop that nagging voice inside that says… maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe I'm making it up. Like, I don't have any solid _proof_. I think that's all my training in engineering, come back to bite me."

"Dreams are proof. It's all real enough for me. I'm just not sure, like… what do we do now?"

"Do?" Asami repeated.

"Do we tell people? … Who else knows?" Korra asked, with a sidelong glance at Asami.

"Pema knows. That's it. She never even told Tenzin. So, unless you told someone…"

"No… although I thought about telling Katara. She knows about living with someone who's a reincarnation… I mean, _you_ know. But I kept quiet. It wasn't my story to tell."

"Thanks. I'm not sure there's anything to 'do' about it. We just… we _know_ it. And we may never have the whole picture." Asami lifted her head. In this patch of the world, the sky was a brilliant deep blue, dashed with tiger-stripes of lavender. "I mean, I want to know more – definitely – and I did my best to understand. I recorded every dream I've ever had. I put them into a story. I consulted experts. But what can I _do,_ now that I know all of this?" Asami paused, and stopped walking. Korra stopped.

Asami looked at the River of Forgetting. "I can remember," she said, finally.

"And that's enough?"

She shrugged. "Memory makes the story of your life. It shapes who you are."

"But is that enough?"

Asami looked away from the river, towards the trees on the horizon. She didn't answer while the wind stirred the grass around them, picked up Korra's hair, rippled the black river-water.

"Asami? You know that the Spirit World reflects the emotions of the people within it, right?"

"I knew that." (Asami had not known that.) "Why do you ask?"

"Because the wind picking up and the sky suddenly getting darker indicates to me you're gathering courage to say something very… dramatic."

Asami glanced around. The sky indeed was darker now – cobalt striped with violet, and the wind was high. Asami realized – she was afraid to say what she wanted, and while she waited, Korra's nerves were mounting. So she swallowed it down. Calmed herself. "It's enough to remember," she said out loud. And that was true. Mostly.

The wind calmed again and the sky brightened, and Korra smiled, which was better than all of those put together. Asami forgave herself for keeping quiet. It was a vacation, after all. They were having fun. Why should she wreck their balance?

Korra held out a hand, saying, "You're starting to sound a bit like Tenzin. Knowing is enough, remembering is enough. Who knew the prissy, beautiful, elegant rich girl was a philosopher to boot?"

"Excuse me – _prissy_?"

000

They woke up the next morning to the sound of the river, but the sound was different. It was lighter and freer - more like a laugh than a conversation. Again, Asami was the first one to stir and sit up. And she stared.

"Korra," she said, "wake up. We've moved."

"We've moved a lot," Korra said, waking up slowly.

"Not like this. The river - it's a brook."

"What?"

Korra sat up. Asami helped her up, and still drowsy, they stumbled towards the sound. The Charming Little Brook of Forgetfulness washed thinly over a bed of shale, glittering in the scant morning light.

Asami looked around. "It's foggier here than it was in the last place," she said. "The sky is amber-colored… it's kind of humid." Next to her, Korra gasped.

"Let me guess," Asami said, "We're someplace dangerous."

"Yep."

Danger, they could deal with. Flippantly, she asked, "Are our souls in mortal peril?"

"Most likely."

She turned on her heel to where Korra was looking. The stream trickled out from between two tall boulders, of white stone. The boulders leaned together to form a gateway to – some ravine or canyon. "So, what are we looking at here?"

"Fun fact about the River of Forgetfulness." Korra spoke in a clipped voice. "Its source is in the Swamp Without Names. Several very dangerous spirits live in that Swamp, including Koh, the Face-Stealer." Now she buried her face in her hands, groaning, "Asami. Why are we here?"

"Because I wanted to come," Asami said quietly. "I wanted to tell you yesterday, but chose not to."

" _Why_?" Korra demanded. "Why _here_? We were having such a great vacation, why did you want to come _here_? Out of the entire Spirit World?"

Asami's voice shook. "Korra, you _know_ why," she said. "It's because I'm afraid. Because I know what lives here. I'm terrified but – I want to face it. I have to _know_. I thought you would… stay with me."

Now Korra fell still. "What do you want to know?"

Asami looked down, at the white stone around them. The ground sure didn't look swampy, here.

"What do you want to know?" Korra repeated. "Why he set Ummi free?"

"I… I think I know that. It – Koh – he knew that Kuruk would get him eventually. The hunter catches his prey. That's the way the story goes. Well, Koh's had a lot of time to think. How could he get the last laugh? He could set Ummi free. She would be gone, really gone, beyond all hope of retrieval. And… at the same time… maybe he knew that when Ummi was reborn, she would remember something. Not much. An echo. But enough."

"Enough of what?"

The next words were halting and slow. "All her life she would be drawn to the Avatar. She would want to know the Avatar. Maybe she would even love the Avatar again. And what could hurt her more… than watching the Avatar die?"

Korra looked up at Asami, and her eyes held another question, though she kept silent.

"I think I know Koh's reasons," Asami said. "But… after all the nightmares, all I've learned, I want to see him. Face to face."

Korra lifted her chin, a defiant, familiar gesture. "Of course I'll stay with you. Reliving the moment I almost died was something I needed. And you need to face… whatever is here. Of course I'll do this with you. But we have to be safe."

She paused. Raking a hand through her shorn hair, she said, "You know you have to keep your face still. Show no expression at all."

"Yes."

"And… if we meet some danger that I can't defeat, I want you to run."

"No—"

"Please, Asami. You – I mean, Ummi – you spent long enough time imprisoned here as it is. I want you to be safe."

"But what about you?"

"I'm the Avatar, I'll figure something out," Korra stood up. She cupped Asami's face in her hands. "Asami," she said, gently, pleading, "promise me you'll run if I tell you to."

Asami's hands clenched into fists. She closed her eyes, rather than look at Korra. They could turn around, she thought. They could seek anywhere else in the Spirit World.

But something in that valley called to Asami. She would not feel complete without meeting it. She'd spend the rest of her life wondering ' _What if_.'

She opened her eyes. "I promise," she said, "if you promise you'll keep yourself safe, too. For my sake."

Now Korra smiled. "Gladly," she said. She kissed Asami, and let her go.

They held hands as they descended the narrow, steep path into the canyon. The light grew foggier and dimmer. Their shadows evaporated away behind them.

Again, they found themselves in a mood where words were unnecessary. Their grip on one another's hand told enough.

The babble of the River of Forgetfulness dwindled behind them, but never faded entirely. Something about the sound bothered Asami. As they reached a narrow ledge and began to walk along it, she developed a fear that she would fall in and crack her skull on the shallow bed of the river. That she'd either die or forget everything she knew, and she wasn't sure which was worse.

Korra took the lead as the path got narrower still. The rocks were so white that they looked like shards of bone. Asami was tired and weary… she could fall so easily…

Still the noise of the river intruded on her thoughts. She had to block it out. She had to remember.

The white stone reminded her of the pristine white gown she wore when she mourned her father. The fresh paper of new books. The ribbons she'd worn in her hair, when she mourned her mother. Sea foam breaking on ice. Sun-bleached seashells. Silver furs of a long-ago wedding day. A mirror of ice. A white mask and a cruel voice…

Asami stumbled and Korra caught her. While Korra gently urged Asami to be careful, Asami remained silent. Fear woke up inside of her – fear that ran deeper than her breath, older than her bones. Fear of this valley, and what lived within.

But Asami grit her teeth. She was here to defeat that fear. No matter what. She seized Korra's hand and marched behind her, her eyes fixed on the horizon. She could see rock columns rising into the sky. Her fear grew with every step. But it was no match for Asami Sato, master of Future Industries, daughter of Yasuko and Hiroshi Sato. So she told herself, over and over again, with every step.

"Asami?"

She looked up.

"We're here."

The tree was so old its bark was like stone, made rigid with the years. The gaping mouth within the tree trunk looked more like a cave, deep and gloomy.

Korra turned to Asami. "Are you ready?"

Asami just nodded.

"Your face…"

Asami nodded again, and willed her face to calmness. Korra did the same, her face relaxing and stilling until she looked vaguely sleepy, but that was all. As they went inside, Korra, without looking back, reached out to Asami, but Asami did not take her hand. Who knew, but maybe holding hands was an admission of feelings. The heart itself was a vulnerability here.

The inside of the cave was not pitch dark. Little holes gasped here and there in the bark, and the wind whistled through them, and light pierced the darkness. It was like they were covered in a woolen shroud. The ground was dry and easy to walk on, but the air smelled stale, with a whiff of old rot.

It was very quiet, Asami noticed. There was a faint screech of the wind, and a distant drip drip drip of water. And their feet on the petrified steps. But no other sound.

Except, of course, for the hammering of her heart.

They went down and down, until the ground leveled out and they reached a cavern. Vines dripped down from within the roots, and the air was humid. Asami swallowed hard. The swaying vines… was there something else moving up there?

Korra stepped forward. "Hello," she called.

No response.

"Don't be confrontational," Asami warned in a whisper. Korra nodded, and said, "We come as guests. We want nothing from you - we only want to meet you, Face-Stealer."

There was an echo of Korra's voice, and then silence.

A breeze brushed Asami's neck, and she turned around, very slowly.

Nothing there.

They waited, unwilling to move. Time stretched past them slowly. Finally Korra knelt and set her hand to the ground, fingers splayed and eyes closed. After a long moment, she opened her eyes again.

"He's not here," she said. Asami stared. Korra stood up and looked around, wonder dawning on her face. "I don't know where he is. I can't trace his energy. But he isn't here, and he hasn't been here… not for a while."

"What's a while?" Asami asked. "A year? Ten years? Fifty?"

"I don't know," said Korra. "Time is weird here… it's like it's all coiled up and bunched together. But Harmonic Convergence – the memory of that pervades the whole Spirit World, like a high-water mark. Koh hasn't been here since Harmonic Convergence, at least."

"Korra? Please, your face... "

"Oh." Korra stilled her face into that sleepy look again.

"Why would he abandon his home?"

Korra looked away. Asami began to step further into the cave. As she had such a tight grip on her emotions now, she could examine them coolly. She felt cold, in fact. Her fear had evaporated. It had stopped being tangible and become simply a basic part of the fabric of her thoughts. She observed herself. Did a part of her remember this place? she wondered. Over three hundred years spent here. Was there any spark of recognition at all? And there was a twinge of disappointment. As far as caves went, this one wasn't particularly spectacular. Sure, it was gloomy, but it was a little crevice compared to the awe-inspiring labyrinths outside of Omashu.

Why didn't he show? Asami wondered.

Her toe caught on a twisting piece of bark, and she nearly fell forward. She caught herself, but had lost a precious moment when her face must have been full of shock and fear.

But still, no sign of Koh.

It didn't make any sense. Asami watched her feet as she picked her way down. That's how she first noticed the stain.

She knelt down, took off her glove, and pressed her bare fingers against a large, discolored spot on the ridge of stone. Whatever liquid had once been there had dried up, but there was some residue left. And there was something else. Just an inch away from Asami's left shoe, there was a necklace.

She picked it up. She stood up and held the necklace up to a beam of light. It was soft blue wool, meant to rest over the collarbones. The fabric was stiff, new. A round, ivory pendant was tied into the wool. It showed two crescent moons, one enfolding the other, around a spiral that was an ancient Water Tribe symbol for the Ocean. And the necklace closed with silk string, now raveling wildly to every direction.

Asami ran her hands over the necklace, blue as hope, cold as ice, delicate as love. She rubbed the silk string between her fingers and then began to tie them. So - over, under - and so. The circle rested in Asami's hands.

And the weight of history crashed down upon her.

She did not remember – it was nothing as solid as memory – it was only _certainty_. This had been _her_ necklace; she had lived as Ummi, loved passionately. And _here_ , she had waited for eons, regretting the life, the love, and the pain that had been stolen from her. And then Koh had released Ummi, and Asami had begun…

Asami held the necklace tight. She could imagine – or maybe foresee – this circle, taking pride of place in the museum of Republic City, shared with the world. Or resting among the relics of history, in the shrine of Avatar Therem. Or maybe… maybe they'd find the grave of Avatar Kuruk, in the ice plains that surrounded the Northern city. And Korra would bend water and earth and air and Asami would lay this necklace down, and the earth and snow would cover the grave again.

"Asami?"

"I'm down here."

The echoes of Korra's footsteps preceded her. "You scared me," she said. "Koh isn't here. But I can't stand waiting. The tension is killing me…"

Asami, without saying a word, held out the necklace. Korra fell silent. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, but she gave no other sign of her emotion. She looked up, and Asami realized that her own face was still that calm, nearly numb mask. There was an eerie magic in Koh's lair, that used their own fear to turn them both into statues.

Korra reached out. She laid her hands below Asami's. She tilted the necklace for a better view. "It's real," she said, softly. "It's all true, then."

Asami nodded. And she was grateful for the stillness, because she could not have expressed everything in her right now. She only had to look into Korra's eyes to know – to connect. Asami took her hands away and gently folded the necklace over. "Let's get out of here," she said, each word as flat and dull as a stone.

Ummi's necklace stayed in Asami's hands as they made their ascent. They arose, blinking, into the light of the Valley, and remained silent. In the amber-light, Asami stowed the necklace away in her pack, along with the photograph of her and her parents. They spent an hour walking away from the Tree, across a ridge of white stone. When they reached the two leaning boulders again, Korra spoke.

"Koh could be anywhere in the Spirit World. Someone is going to have to look for him. But not us… not this time." After a pause, she added, "I sure hope that last night's relocation adventure repeats itself."

"Come again?"

Korra replied, "Well, I mean that thing where we woke up much closer to the source of the River than otherwise… it'd just be nice if tomorrow we wake up and we're right at our old campsite. Save us a lot of trouble."

Asami laughed, not because it was particularly funny, but out of relief: the sound of Korra's voice, the observations of the happenstance ways of the Spirit World. Korra managed a few chuckles, and they settled back into walking side-by-side, in a natural rhythm. After a while, Asami began to sing, a chart-topping pop song from Republic City. It was just a silly song about how if you were feeling blue, all you needed was to get out and get under the moon. Asami knew half of the words, and made up those she didn't, and before she'd started the second chorus, Korra had joined her. They sang on and off again for the rest of the day. They settled down, lit incense, and held one another closely.

The next morning, they awoke to the sound of the river roaring past. They were much farther down its course, and decided to go onward.

000

They walked along the River of Forgetfulness, and the banks grew steeper and rockier. "We must be approaching the waterfall," Korra said. "Watch your step." They passed under the branches of a weeping willow – its leaves touched the water, and the entire tree was a shivering white color. On the other side, an outcropping of rock loomed over the river.

Korra took off in a dash, scaling the little slope, and stopping at the top. She held her arms out for balance. Asami called her name, but Korra was intent on bending over and looking down. Asami yelled "Korra!" But Korra stayed where she was, looking into the river.

" _KORRA!_ "

She regretted it instantly, as Korra tottered a moment, and almost lost her balance. But she turned her fumble into grace, as she turned to Asami and tripped down the rocks as nimbly as a lemur.

"You scared me so badly!" Asami exclaimed. "Whatever happened to 'watch your step'?"

"I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to do… it was more like a compulsion than anything else. Katara said that when Aang was in the Spirit World, he could look into water and he'd see Avatar Roku's reflection."

"And you were looking for Aang?"

"Yes," Korra looked down shamefacedly. "What with all our talk about past lifetimes… and this isn't an ordinary river… I thought, maybe… I should have warned you. I'm sorry."

Asami relaxed. "It's okay, Korra. Don't scare me like that again." She paused. "Did you see him?"

Korra nodded, infinitesimally. "The light wasn't good, but it was definitely him. He didn't say anything. He just pointed the way further downriver." She held out her hand. "Shall we?"

Asami nodded, and they strode forward. After the white willow tree, a footpath took shape. Asami's mind began racing. "If you saw him, then maybe Harmonic Convergence wasn't the end! Maybe your connection to your past lives isn't as lost as you thought."

"I don't know. I can't imagine Avatar Aang not talking to me when I was so lost and alone without Raava. Besides, I've already moved on. Mostly. Would you tell a man who'd lost an arm ten years ago, that maybe the arm wasn't as gone as he'd thought?"

"No… That's not quite what I meant… maybe Aang's spirit isn't destroyed, or just gone. After all, the Dragon Iroh is still in the Spirit World, still himself, wandering around somewhere… right?"

"Right," Korra said. Her eyes grew distant and she looked around the horizon. "I'm surprised we haven't met him yet. But I'm sure we will, soon. We'll have a lot to talk about!"

"Yes! Maybe Aang and Roku and the rest are still _around_ , just not connected to you. Like the phone line has been severed. Maybe they're more like other spirits, now. Maybe they look different, but they're still— you know."

"You mean we'll turn this corner—" Korra gestured to a bend in the road – "and Kyoshi and Yangchen will just _be there_ , having a little tea party?"

She paused. "That'd be _amazing,_ " Asami said

Their eyes met. They grinned, and started running.

They rounded the bend and skidded to a halt. There was no tea party. Only a little shallow pool in the black river, where two white cranes waded. One was crowned by a red circle, the other with a blue one. They did not seem at all disturbed by the interruption. They regarded the human girls with inscrutable gazes. For an instant, Asami was sure that they would speak, but instead they spread their wings and took flight. They circled high above them, and a sound floated down to the humans below.

"Did you hear that?" Korra asked, looking at Asami.

"It sounded like laughing… two women laughing." She continued to stare after the birds, who wheeled out of sight. "But… it's kindly laughter. What do you think it means?"

She shrugged. "I have no idea."

Asami set an arm over Korra's shoulder. "How about we say it's a good omen?"

"Sounds perfect."


	13. In which they Dance

They heard the roar of the waterfall hours before they reached it.

To their right they saw, at last, the gleam of the River of Remembrance. It was such a brilliant white that it was almost blinding. Up close, the light's reflection grew so sharp as to hurt the eyes, so they found themselves walking at a distance, their heads half-turned away. The space between the black river and the white river narrowed.

As they walked on, the sky seemed to sink into twilight, according to the inscrutable rules of the Spirit World. The roar of the water grew louder and louder, so loud that speaking became impossible. Mist filled their vision, and they went slowly. Korra stopped. She pointed to a fissure in the rocks. They investigated, carefully now because the rocks were slippery. The fissure led to a staircase.

Who made these stairs? Asami wanted to ask. Human or Spirit? For what purpose?

No answers. Asami could feel something tugging at her, pulling her forward, calling to her with the water's voice. She heard it, and chose to follow. She and Korra made their careful descent.

It was a long way down. Down and forward. They kept one hand on the wall at all times, and the other hand in each other's keeping. The waterfall's noise never abated, but reverberated into their ribcages, their hearts. Again, they were silent. It reminded Asami of the morning that they had left Republic City.

Down and forward. Down and forward.

The stairs leveled out. Korra and Asami ducked through a low doorway. Before them thundered an unending wall of water, stretching in both directions, all colored moonlight-silver and struck through with rainbows.

It was just as well they couldn't speak. No words could match this sight.

They stood and stared a while, but then, at an unspoken signal, began to look for the next way to go. To their left the stone ground dwindled away; the path continued rightward. They went on, the mist beading into diamonds on their hair. Asami worried about accidentally inhaling water from the River of Forgetfulness. They kept walking, and their path ventured sharply to the left, where a jag in the cliff up above created a break in the waterfall. Asami found the path, barely visible.

They crossed. As they passed on the other side of the waterfall, the wind picked up. Fog and mist swirled into their eyes, making it nearly impossible to see.

The mists shifted. The light played on the surface of the tumultuous water. The two humans standing there changed, or maybe they only seemed to change.

The figure in front – strong and sure, a soul that knew fear, as well as compassion – turned around. He regarded the woman before him with a smile like fire lighting on the tundra. He reached out and stroked her long, dark hair.

The woman pressed his hand against her face. Her other hand she pressed to his heart, as if she would wipe away all of his sorrow. As she smiled, her eyes filled with tears. A betrothal necklace gleamed like new fallen snow at her throat.

She lifted her hand from his heart and set it along his jaw, then onto his shoulder. They began to dance.

Stately and graceful, joy measured out. Their feet seemed to simply know where water and rock would be. They followed the path without a misstep, even when it turned into a little string of stepping-stones. All this was done sightlessly – for they never took their eyes off of each other.

They halted at a large, flat rock, and circled very closely to one another. His hands brushed her stomach, her hips. She pressed on his shoulders and he lifted her up, clear of the mists. Now she laughed, and the sound carried across the water.

They made a few more steps, in a traditional Water Tribe dance forgotten over two hundred years ago. The dance drew to a close, with the man and woman – now, better to call them husband and wife – standing opposite each other, their hands clasped so tight. They looked at one another like there was no other source of light in the world.

The cold wind blew again, silencing for a minute the noise of the falls, and the mist scattered.

Their arms wrapped around each other, and they buried their faces in each other's shoulder. With a great, shuddering sigh, Asami sobbed, and Korra's arms tightened around her. They had never been so close.

And that was it, the magic was gone.

They were only themselves.

When they pulled away, neither said anything of what had just happened. They turned back, to look in wonder at the waterfall of Remembrance and Forgetting. After a while, Asami said, "We probably ought to find someplace else to sleep."

"Practical as always," Korra replied.

They hopped from stone to stone, and landed on a sandy beach. Looking around, Korra assessed out loud that they had just crossed a little strait. This waterfall fed into the greatest sea of the Spirit World, and they rested on its banks. This would be a good place to camp – Korra liked the idea of sleeping with the song of the sea in her ears.

Asami didn't quite hear. Instead she had her eyes fixed upward. In the darkness, she could see a light dancing in the sky. It _looked_ like the Moon of the physical world – but it wasn't a sphere. It looked more like a coiling, gleaming white serpent… or two loops that fed one another, over and over, for infinity.

"Is that the Wheel of Rebirth?" she asked Korra.

Korra looked up. "You know," she answered, "I don't know. But it might be."

So that was where it all ended, Asami thought. All you could suffer and struggle with, cherish and love, give and take, it all ended up there, to be washed away before your soul was given to a new life. Memory didn't last, and that was a painful thought, but if everyone forgot everything, then it sort of evened out. And it was just another chapter of a lesson that Asami had learned when she was a child: nothing lasted, so love while you could, with open hands and an open heart.

Asami turned to her friend, her partner, her dear one. "Korra?"

"Yes?" Korra looked to Asami so quickly a lock of hair fell into her face.

Smiling, Asami reached over and tucked the lock behind her ear. "I love you."

Korra's face broke into a smile. "Asami, I love you so much."

They kissed and held each other in the light of the Wheel of Rebirth.

They were home.

THE END

* * *

A/N: Yes, the end. This began as a fairly silly idea, that I thought could make a little series of drabbles. Of course, "little series of drabbles" turned into a forty-thousand word retelling of the series from a new point of view. -sigh- It also became a spiritual, meditative character study and a chance to flesh out Korra and Asami's relationship, which is, in the show, a beautiful shadow of what it could have been. More than that, this story became something constructive to focus on when I was in a real rough patch. "As Ummi" is a piece that I'm very proud of, and very fond of. Maybe it's not perfect, but I'm happy with it.

My thanks to the Avatar Wiki for their episode transcripts, which helped me so much in keeping dialogue and action accurate. Any mistakes I made are probably because I failed to consult the transcripts.

I treasure every review I got - thank you, reviewers o' mine. And thank you to all of my readers - whenever you find this, THANK YOU for reading my peculiar but earnest story to the end. I hope that it brought you delight, as it did for me.


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